By Tim Redmond :48hills – excerpt
Breed’s plan, drafted with little community input, would do nothing for the city’s affordable housing needs; supes aren’t going along.
Mayor London Breed is proposing some pretty sweeping new rules to make it easier for for-profit developers to make money building housing in San Francisco. But nobody from the Mayor’s Office showed up at the Board of Supes hearing today, leaving a lone planning staffer to answer questions that in many cases he had no qualifications or authority to answer.
Neither of the supes co-sponsoring the bill, Matt Dorsey and Joel Engardio, was there for the start of the hearing, and they sent no staff to the hearing and then left for another appointment…
Aaron Starr, the director of legislative affairs for the Planning Department, had to represent both his agency, which had its own comments on the measure, and Mayor London Breed, who offered a long list of last-minute amendments
Sup. Dean Preston said that he had reached out to the Mayor’s Office, and “we were told that nobody would be here.”
It was, Sup. Aaron Peskin said, a “strange dynamic,” unprecedented in his more than 14 years in public office.
That was just the start to a hearing overwhelmingly dominated by community and tenant groups strongly opposed to the mayor’s approach…(more)
CSFN may consider writing a letter on this one. It is obvious that the bill removes more citizen’s rights and reduces affordable options for developments in San Francisco. These are questionable actions for city leaders who want the city to be a shiny example of world peace and prosperity on the world stage. Who is running this show that is driving residents and businesses out of the city while selling it off the highest bidders?