Category: Update

by Roger Lin and Douglas Carstens : westsideobserver – excerpt

In October, The Housing Workshop released a landmark report about the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). This report, called “CEQA: California’s Living Environmental Law: CEQA’s Role in Housing, Environmental Justice & Climate Change,” focuses on environmental justice and climate change as today’s most urgent environmental issues, including cases studies illustrating how CEQA addresses those problems. It has an in-depth analysis of CEQA’s role, over the last fifty years, in protecting California’s natural landscapes and communities, including some of California’s most iconic places. Coming at this time, the report is an antidote to the vitriol being generated in some quarters to discredit CEQA’s value to California in attempts to weaken it. A strong CEQA is needed now more than ever as California faces unprecedented challenges…

A sustained campaign against CEQA, led by polluting industries, real estate developers, and other special interests, has repeatedly and falsely claimed that … California’s preeminent environmental law is somehow fueling the state’s housing crisis.”…

Unfortunately, in recent months a Big Lie about CEQA has been popping up in California, and it has serious implications for public health and the environment. A Big Lie is a false narrative that is flatly contradicted by incontestable facts but repeated until it gains a life of its own and can no longer be easily refuted. A sustained campaign against CEQA, led by polluting industries, real estate developers, and other special interests, has repeatedly and falsely claimed that – despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary – California’s preeminent environmental law is somehow fueling the state’s housing crisis. Several unsuccessful candidates seized on this false narrative in their efforts to win votes in the recent gubernatorial recall election. (https://calmatters.org/politics/2021/09/newsom-recall-republicans-ceqa-housing/)…

Roger Lin is an attorney at the California Environmental Justice Alliance, a statewide, community-led alliance that works to achieve environmental justice…Douglas Carstens is a partner with Chatten-Brown, Carstens & Minteer, LLP, a law firm specializing in environmental, land use, municipal, and natural resource law based in Hermosa Beach and San Diego…(more)

If you need more arguments to fight fake facts, lies and seriously twisted claims from the government press corps, look not further than the reports in this article and then take the only action out there to reign in the stare bills that are corporatizing control of the land, water, and soon to the food production in what was once a freedom-loving laid back liberal state. The current state of affairs points to a bad ending unless the people speak up and empower themselves and their communities by passing a state constitutional amendment to take back control of California. Details here: https://ourneighborhoodvoices.com/

By Annika Hom : missionlocal – excerpt

Developments in Development is a weekly-ish column recapping news about real estate, housing, planning, and neighborhood changes.

Small Sites, a city program that promises to combat displacement, was dubbed by policymakers as fundamentally good, but “broken,” just a few weeks ago. Not long after, its fate was swept into drama and so-called “political games.” Good thing I love both! Let the games begin!…

San Francisco, we have a problem

The Small Sites Program is a city loan program that helps nonprofits acquire and rehabilitate residential buildings with fewer than 25 units. Since its inception, advocates championed it as a powerful anti-displacement tool that kept low-income tenants in place, and magically kept units affordable forever…

According to multiple nonprofit organizations acquiring these sites, two obstacles prevent filling vacancies quickly: a policy we’ll dive into later, and DAHLIA, the city’s affordable-housing lottery system…

Housing advocates brainstormed some solutions:

• Allow more flexibility with the 80 percent average rent policy;
• Speed up marketing and leasing;
• Create a program-wide or a nonprofit waitlist to use when vacancies open;
• Pull Small Sites from DAHLIA altogether

“These are not new issues, and the solutions are not big revelations,” Cohen said. Still, the mayor’s office politely resists, he said. “This is a policy decision of MOHCD. What’s broken is their attitude.”…

Buildings are amassing debt — and affordable units, dust…(more)

Thanks for the explanation on part of why the affordable housing system is broken. Take a closer look at AMI as that is another can of worms. Put AMI and DHLIA together and you have a failed system. Why pretend it works when it doesn’t? Who benefits from failure?

By Tim Redmond : 48hills – excerpt

Sonja Trauss, appointee to policy agency, is now registered to vote in Oakland

The Regional Planning Committee of the Association of Bay Area Governments has nine members representing cities. The powerful panel promotes development goals for the region, and although one slot is empty, seven of the eight current members are either mayors, deputy mayors, or City Council members of cities in the Bay Area.

There’s one person on the panel who was never elected to anything. That’s Sonja Trauss, a founder of the Yimby movement and failed candidate for District 6 supervisor in San Francisco.

She’s tagged as the representative of the Office of the Mayor, San Francisco…(more)

Political payback since she lost the race. Whether the choice is ethical or fair, we in San Francisco have learned that most of with is not ethical and fair does to yet rise to the level of a criminal challenge. It will be us to us to support the efforts being made by some supervisors to overcome this legal hurdle by fixing some legislative loopholes. Follow the action in the committees as the arguments are being made there before they head to the full board for approval. The only time citizens get to speak on some of these items is in committee.

The public just got a big boost on opening the Great Highway and other major streets leading into the Golden Gate Park.

Legal Complaint filed today

Today, after weeks and months of hard work by our core group and our Attorney we have filed a lawsuit against Phil Ginsburg and the SFRPD for harm done to plaintiffs and the public for the closures of Great Highway, JFK, and MLK.

A press release has been sent to the media and a press conference was held today at 4:30 PM. Several plaintiffs, including the Open the Great Highway Alliance, present a cross-section of individuals who have been harmed by these closures. The lawsuit asks for a preliminary injunction, which would return closed streets to their pre-Covid status during the litigation of this suit. We will keep you informed of any news about this.

DONATIONS STILL NEEDED

For more information, read the press release here: http://www.openthegreathighway.com/publicpressrelease

DONATE NOW!Forward this email to as many friends, family, and neighbors – together, we can take back our streets!

By Eleni Balakrishnan :missionlocal – ecerpt

Three former Broadmoor police chiefs and a retired commander were “unlawfully employed” by their small-town police department and defrauded the state public pension system for years, according to an audit conducted by the California Public Employees’ Retirement System.

The audit, which was posted to the Broadmoor Police Department website today, listed various observed violations, including three retirees who received full-time compensation while also receiving retirement benefits, and two who took large lump-sum payments in addition to their hourly pay.

Broadmoor is a census-designated place located within Daly City. Mission Local broke the story in April about then-Chief Michael Connolly, a former San Francisco Police officer, illegally installing himself as chief of the police department in 2019 and hiring others from the SFPD…(more)

How many schemes to defraud the citizens have not yet been discovered? How many more do we have to look forward to?

By Joe Eskenazi : 48hills – excerpt

PUC allowed contractors to renege on pledged community donations — pledges that had played a role in their winning of contracts

An audit released today by the Controller’s office reveals that the PUC’s Community Benefits Program is both deeply problematic and deeply mismanaged. In multiple contracts reviewed during the audit, the PUC allowed contractors to fail to completely deliver their promised — and binding —commitments to donate funds to the communities affected by PUC projects.

This is doubly disturbing, as the strength of a bidder’s pledged commitment to the community is a major factor in deciding who wins a lucrative contract from the PUC. Today’s audit revealed at least one situation in which the strength of a contractor’s commitment to fund the community allowed it to beat out a competitor that submitted a less generous offer — but the winning contractor subsequently reneged on the commitment that earned it the job.

“By awarding contracts based, in part, on Social Impact Partnership commitments and allowing contractors to default on those commitments, SFPUC increases the risk that it will award contracts to contractors that ultimately will not deliver the greatest value to the City or its residents,” sums up the audit…(more)

I can think of a few questions for the new director of the SFPUC and the City Attorney. Like, what does it take for a contractor to be put on a black list and what does it take to fire an incompetent and or crooked city employee?

By J. K. Dineen : sfchronicle – excerpt

A seven-story affordable housing complex in San Francisco’s Sunset District will be allowed to go forward despite a neighborhood association’s lawsuit seeking a temporary restraining order that would have suspended pre-development work on the project.

On Wednesday San Francisco Superior Court Judge Charles Haines denied a request for injunctive relief that was filed by attorneys for the Mid-Sunset Neighborhood Association, according to court records.

The west side neighborhood group had filed a lawsuit on Tuesday alleging that the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corp.’s project at 2550 Irving St. represented a breach of contract, negligence and breach of “implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing.”…(more)

This deal will cost the folks who are pushing it a lot of votes next time they run for office. The entire west side of the city is battling two major issues with City Hall. The forced development of projects they hate and the closure of major streets in the neighborhood that filters the traffic from Marin and San Mateo into arrow neighborhood streets. The battle lines are being drawn and the results of the clash could put an end to the current regime. No amount of lipstick or press briefings can hide the pig under the mask.

By Glenn Rogers : westsideobserver – excerpt

ecently, in the November issue of the Westside Observer, there was an article, Plan to Protect Neighborhoods from Fire Abandoned, describing San Francisco as unprepared for another earthquake and fire. The source of the information was a former official who retired 10 years ago. That report did not take into account numerous improvements in technology and planning. The public should be aware of these advances. Graciously, on January 31, 2018, the SF Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) and the SF Fire Department (SFFD), both agreed to discuss the article. At the meeting was the Assistant Deputy Chief Anthony Rivera. and John Scarpulla from the SFPUC. Fortunately, a great deal of progress has occurred in the last ten years…

CONGENIALITY: SFFD AND SFPUC:

Instead of these two agencies being at odds with each other, I found just the opposite. They explained that the SFPUC has countless water engineers and plumbers, while the SFFD does not. Furthermore, the SFPUC explained that they listen carefully to any request from the SFFD, since the SFPUC never fought a fire. This congeniality was sincere and heartfelt as these two agencies worked together to describe a plan they developed to fight fire in San Francisco…(more)

By Kathleen Ronayne : pressdemocrat – excerpt

SACRAMENTO — California water agencies that serve 27 million residents and 750,000 acres of farmland won’t get any of the water they’ve requested from the state heading into 2022 other than what’s needed for critical health and safety, state officials announced Wednesday.

It’s the earliest date the Department of Water Resources has issued a 0% water allocation, a milestone that reflects the dire conditions in California as drought continues to grip the nation’s most populous state and reservoirs sit at historically low levels. State water officials said mandatory water restrictions could be coming.

“If conditions continue to be this dry, we will see mandatory cutbacks,” Karla Nemeth, director of DWR, told reporters…(more)

How can California continue to grow the population during a major drought when we can’t support the people and crops we have now?

By Tim Redmond : 48hills – excerpt

The Board of Supes, by a veto-proof majority, approved a measure today to allocate $64 million to fund social housing.

Only Sups. Catherine Stefani, Myrna Melgar, and Ahsha Safai dissented.

The vote does more than set aside money to take vulnerable properties off the speculative market. It sends a clear message to the Mayor’s Office that the supervisors are close to unanimous in their position that money from Proposition I should be allocated to housing…(more)