By Tim Redmond : 48hills – excerpt
The major reform measures made it through their first round at the Rules Committee last week and will be back Monday/31 for what should a final vote before they move on to the full board. But it’s not clear what will happen to Mayor London Breed’s attack on the School Board.
That measure, an extraordinary power grab by a chief executive who freely accuses others of doing that, met with a chilly reception last week at Rules.
But there were enough votes to move it forward for another week…
Sup. Dean Preston wants a hearing to look into how many apartments in San Francisco are currently vacant, and what the city can do about it. That’s coming up at the Land Use and Transportation Committee Monday/31 at 1:30pm.
It’s a fascinating and important issue that often gets lost in all of the Yimby rhetoric about needed to build more housing—because it’s safe to say that a fair percentage of the housing that’s been built in the past ten years is empty.
The last time we checked in on this, we discovered that a lot of the new condos were bought by people as second or third or even fourth homes, and many didn’t live in them. We used property-tax data, which is available but imperfect: If someone’s tax bill for a downtown condo is sent to an address other than that condo, it’s pretty clear they don’t live there. But they could be renting it out.…(more)