Category: Update

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San Francisco gets all clear from state housing officials

By Sarah Klearman, Staff Reporter, San Francisco Business Times : via email – excerpt

San Francisco is back in California’s good graces.

The city is now officially compliant with state housing law, according to a letter sent to San Francisco planning officials by the state department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) Jan. 16. San Francisco fell out of compliance at the end of last year after it failed to accomplish a handful of state-mandated changes to the way it approves and permits new housing by a late November deadline.

Each of the changes the city failed to implement – part of a longer to-do list handed to San Francisco as part of a state investigation into why the city’s timelines for approving and building new housing are the longest of any jurisdiction in California — were tied to the passage of San Francisco Mayor London Breed’s constraints reduction ordinance. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors failed to pass the legislation, meant to ease the process of building new housing in San Francisco, by the November deadline.

The state gave San Francisco 30 days – until the end of December — to pass the ordinance and subsequently prove to HCD it had taken all necessary steps to comply with state housing law. Failure to do so would have made the city susceptible to punitive measures like loss of its ability to enforce local zoning codes, a measure known as the builder’s remedy, as well as loss of eligibility for certain kinds of state funding.

The Board of Supervisors ultimately passed the constraints reduction ordinance in December. But they did so with several modifications to the ordinance, even as HCD had repeatedly encouraged the board to pass the ordinance exactly as it was authored by Breed.

After roughly a week of review, HCD confirmed ahead of the December deadline that the modified ordinance met its standards, positioning San Francisco to return to compliance with state housing law. David Zisser, who heads HCD’s housing accountability unit, said in December the department needed a letter from the city describing the actions it had taken to come back into compliance before it could give San Francisco the all clear.

The Jan. 16 letter cements the OK for San Francisco, meaning the city will dodge the punishments that await California jurisdictions that fall out of compliance with California housing law…

HCD, which has taken a keen interest in San Francisco, assigned the city a list of 18 total action items last October as part of the conclusion of its more than year-long study into how the city approves and builds new housing. The first of the items were due in late November; an additional tranche were due Jan. 1. San Francisco Planning Director Rich Hillis told the Business Times at the beginning of January the city had accomplished those items before the Jan. 1 deadline.

Additional action items are due in coming weeks…(more)

For the full list of action items and deadlines assigned to the city by HCD, contact HCD. Thanks to a friend we got the information in the article, which raises a few  good questions for the officials at the Affordable Housing discussions.

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Tiny-home vendor arrives in SF to peddle its wares

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced in March that California would supply a total of 1,200 small cabinsto Los Angeles, San Diego County, San Jose and Sacramento to house homeless people.

Amy King, CEO of Washington state-based Pallet Inc., said she was thrilled in September to sign a contract with the California Department of General Services setting pricing and construction standards for the tiny shelter homes her company makes.

Not having received any orders for months, however, King loaded her company’s latest prefabricated offering, designed to meet the state’s specifications, onto a truck and launched a tour of select Bay Area cities — including San Francisco — in hopes of finding future business.

“We’re proud of it,” said King, who parked across the street from Civic Center Plaza last week to show off a 120-square-foot cabin that had a bed, a shower and toilet, storage, heating, air conditioning, a window, a lockable door and a price tag of $48,500…(more)

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California Cops Want Non-Sworn Staff To Testify in Court. Why?

By : Calmatters – excerpt

Redding Police Chief Brian Barner has long thought it was odd that community service officers are allowed to interview witnesses to crimes, but state law prohibits them from testifying about what they were told.

Instead, gun-carrying officers with arrest powers, he said, have to get pulled off their beats to reinterview each witness and then go to court to recount what the witnesses said.

“It just takes that officer off the street and from doing proactive enforcement and responding to emergency calls,” Barner said in an interview with CalMatters.

So Barner and his colleagues around the state turned to Barner’s state senator, Republican Brian Dahle, who challenged Gov. Gavin Newsom in the 2021 recall election, running on a platform that included slamming Newsom on crime…

Dahle’s bill, SB 804, would amend Proposition 115, the “Crime Victims Justice Reform Act,” passed by voters in 1990. The proposition included a provision that allows for changes with a two-thirds vote of both the Senate and the Assembly, according to a legislative analysis…(more)

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S.F.’s streets could improve with tiny homes — but only if the city gets out of its own way

By Chronicle Editorial Board : sfchronicle – excerpt

Tiny home communities are one way to get homeless people off the street, fast. Why isn’t San Francisco leveraging this option?

For years, the parking lot behind a shuttered Walgreens at 1979 Mission St. in San Francisco has sat empty, despite its proximity to the 16th Street Mission BART station. After a nearly decade-long push-and-pull battle between neighborhood residents and developers, the site is now earmarked for hundreds of affordable housing units. But construction won’t start for at least another two years.

In late 2022, Supervisor Hillary Ronen came up with a pragmatic plan: While the development waits to break ground, the lot could be used as a tiny home community for unhoused San Franciscans. Just like an existing site at 33 Gough St., the vacant space could be filled with dozens of small, shed-like structures that would help stabilize people experiencing homelessness before they move on to permanent housing.

In typical San Francisco fashion, however, that plan was stymied by exorbitant costs, bureaucracy and neighborhood opposition. While people slept in doorways, in vehicles and on public transit, the city and neighborhood residents engaged in an all-out war over the site until an agreement was finally made to start construction of the homes this winter. The cost: $104,000 per unit and even more for offices, a community room and a full-time staffer to field community complaints…(more)

Just for jollies I checked the price of trailers. They can be purchased of a lot less than the tiny homes we see listed here. Depending on the size, they start at around 35K. You can go smaller or larger depending on what you want. Tiny houses and trailers  appear to be as cheap as $18K. Not sure why the cost of SF tiny houses is so much more expensive than trailers, and, the trailers come with all those amenities built in that you want in a home.  Designers have been working on the perfecting them for a long time. I think they proably have it down by now. All you need is a place to put them. You might request FEMA trailers or some others that are already manufactured and have them here in a week, especially if you waved all the red tape associated with building permits, since all yo need to do is hook them up to utilities.

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Hyde Street Pier at Fisherman’s Wharf is closing this year. What becomes of its historic ships?

By John King : sfchronicle – excerpt

Look past the obvious attractions along San Francisco’s bay waterfront, and Hyde Street Pier has long had its own cult appeal.

Tucked between Fisherman’s Wharf and Aquatic Park, it’s an 1,100-foot-long structure lined with historic vessels from as far back as 1886. Visitors can board ships that carried grain from California to Europe, and crossed the bay before today’s bridges were a gleam in anyone’s eye.

At some point this spring, however, four of the floating landmarks will set sail for Vallejo for at least several years — and the century-old pier itself will be torn out and totally rebuilt, a project that may not be complete until 2027.

“There’s going to be disruption, we know that,” said Dale Dualan, a spokesperson for the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, which manages the pier and nearby Aquatic Park. “But this is an opportunity to preserve these resources for future generations.”.

Though the $102 million project was approved by Congress in 2022, many basic details remain vague — such as what the new pier will look like, or when construction will begin and end. Nor is it clear when the historic vessels that line the pier will depart, or if all will return once work is complete…(more)

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This San Francisco Diner Has Sat Empty for 8 Years, Despite Luxury Homes Plan. Here’s Why

by Garrett Leahy : sfstandard – excerpt

A shuttered San Francisco diner has sat empty for over eight years, despite long-standing plans to develop it into luxury apartments.

The Lucky Penny diner, next to a Trader Joe’s at 2670 Geary Blvd. in Laurel Heights, was a favorite for late-night hospital visitors and University of San Francisco students, as it stayed open around the clock.

After it served its last patty melt on Christmas Eve in 2015, plans emerged in 2018 to demolish the diner and erect a building with 101 luxury apartments, dubbed the Laurel, by developer Presidio Bay Ventures.

But it’s 2024, and the Lucky Penny remains a shell of its once-bustling self.

Ex-cop Dominic Yin, who runs the family trust that owns the land and building, blames city red tape and swelling labor and building costs brought about by inflation for the delay.

“Take whatever the price [for development] was and double or triple it,” Yin said, declining to share how much construction would cost currently.

A 2019 building permit for an eight-story building with apartments and a street-level commercial space pegged the cost at $25 million. The Planning Commission approved the project in January 2020…(more)

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Diss track or not, some Asian voters unhappy with Mayor Breed

By Yujie Zhou : missionlocal – excerpt

Chino Yang recently wrote a rap — a diss track, to be specific — about his frustration with anti-Asian hate, the current state of San Francisco and Mayor London Breed. Within days, the Asian rapper found himself the focus of condemnation from San Francisco’s African American leaders and the subject of a media frenzy.

The reaction to Yang’s rap criticizing Mayor Breed was as much about the messenger as the message, said Kyle Shin, 26, a fifth-generation Chinese American in the city who is also a rapper. Generally, he noted, Asians are perceived as reserved, the “model minority.”

That model minority may be turning on Breed. Interviews with small-business owners and leaders in the Asian community indicate that many are unhappy with the mayor and ready to support another candidate in the November election…

“I see people that are mad at London Breed, you know, don’t trust her at all,” said Albert Chow, president of the neighborhood association People of Parkside Sunset and owner of Great Wall Hardware on Taraval Street.

“I know there’re a lot of people that aren’t very happy with what’s going on now with the politics,” added William J. Barnickel, president of the Outer Sunset Merchant Professional Association and a commissioner on San Francisco’s Veterans Affairs Committee. While Barnickel is not Asian, most of his association’s members are.

David Ho, a Chinatown organizer and political consultant, said that the community now sees the mayor as responsible for the public-safety issues that have been there for years. Previously, the mayor and others could blame former District Attorney Chesa Boudin…

“Maybe this time we can point at the mayor, ‘You better do your job,’” added Sean Kim, vice president of Richmond District’s Geary Boulevard Merchants Association and owner of Joe’s Ice Cream. For small businesses, Kim said, it is dangerous to do business in San Francisco now. “But we don’t see any accountability, so we are not happy.”…

“I’m really glad to see Chino Yang speak up, and we have to support him,” said Kim, who also noted the chilling effect the aftermath of the incident would cause. “This kind of incident gives signal, ‘Oh, any other Asian small businesses, you better be quiet, otherwise you will be targeted.’”…

If not Breed who?

Breed will have the benefit of incumbency, but she is facing a burgeoning field: Daniel Lurie, nonprofit founder and the heir to the Levi Strauss fortune, pulled papers in September, joining District 11 Supervisor Safaí. Former District 2 supervisor and acting mayor Mark Farrell is reportedly exploring a run, and supporters of Board President Aaron Peskin have urged him to throw his hat in the ring…(more)

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S.F. is working to reduce homeless tent camps. New data shows how it’s going

By J.D. Morris : sfchronicle – excerpt

San Francisco reduced the number of homeless tents on its streets by about 17% last year in the months after the city ramped up encampment sweeps in response to a court ruling, Mayor London Breed’s office said Thursday.

The city counted 609 tents in July, prior to receiving September guidance from a federal appeals court that local officials said empowered them to take a more assertive approach to clearing encampments. In November, after San Francisco had begun incorporating the court guidance, the tent count dropped to 508, Breed’s office said.

The initial July tent figure was the highest since October 2020, when the city counted 703 tents. And the November tent count of 508 was the lowest since June 2022 when there were 492 tents, according to city data.

However, the number of tents tends to fluctuate and it’s unclear from the data whether the court guidance was behind the drop…

Under an injunction in place since December 2022 — which San Francisco is challenging in court — the city is restricted in its ability to remove homeless tents from streets and sidewalks without providing shelter and from enforcing certain laws against public camping. The city has still been able to remove tent camps, after giving 72 hours’ notice, to ensure access for disabled people and first responders. The injunction also allows for sweeps to be conducted for health and safety reasons, and it permits the city to force encampment residents to move temporarily for street cleaning.

But after the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals released guidance in the case in September, the city said it could begin enforcing anti-camping laws against people determined to be “voluntarily” homeless, which means they “declined a specific offer of available shelter” or already had access to shelter…(more)

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Meet the man tasked with overseeing The City’s finances

By Adam Shanks : sfexaminer – excerpt

Greg Wagner accepts his appointment as the new San Francisco city controller by Mayor London Breed

Greg Wagner is poised to be the next San Francisco controller.

Wagner’s appointment — which was announced by Mayor London Breed on Wednesday and still requires approval by the Board of Supervisors — will fill the vacancy left by outgoing Controller Ben Rosenfield.

The controller, who serves as The City’s chief financial officer and auditor, will be key to The City’s navigation of a daunting array of financial challenges in the coming years. Though the job typically has a low public profile, its occupant is often thought of as an unsung hero to those within city government…(more)

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Rec and Park wants to pave paradise to put up a (yacht) parking lot

  • By Erin Roach : sfexaminer – excerpt (includes audio)

The SF Recreation and Park Department plans to build a 235-slip harbor near Marina Green.

In the song “Big Yellow Taxi,” Joni Mitchell famously sings, “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone?.”

The Marina Green waterfront — an iconic symbol of our city — will soon be gone if the Recreation and Park Department goes through with a plan to build a 235-slip harbor at that very location, and most San Franciscans are unaware of it.

This ill-conceived plan is the result of a legal battle between The City and PG&E. Instead of cleaning up PG&E’s toxic waste and rebuilding Gashouse Cove in the East Marina as the lawsuit stipulated, RPD worked out a deal with PG&E in which it would relocate half of the east harbor,leaving Gashouse Cove to silt over.

But there may be time to stop it if supervisors Ahsha Safai, Aaron Peskin and Connie Chan successfully pass their Gashouse Cove Project ordinance in the coming weeks.

If you, too, don’t want to see the Marina Green waterfront become a parking lot for 40-foot yachts, write a letter of support to your district supervisor and the mayor today…(more)

Contacts for Supervisors are here: https://wordpress.com/view/discoveryink.wordpress.com