News – Page 61 – Coalition for San Francisco Neighborhoods

May 21, 2020

Tell SF Planning that the Balboa Reservoir Project Must be Postponed

The Commission must hear from you by Friday, May 22 to assure that CCSF will be preserved and protected.

Next Thursday, May 28, the SF Planning Commission will be deciding the fate of CCSF by ruling on the Balboa Reservoir Project. We recently asked you to write the Commission asking them not to approve the project. If you’ve sent a letter, thank you. If you haven’t, we hope you will. In the meantime…

RIGHT NOW we need your immediate help!

We’ve just learned that the City and developers were supposed to enter into written agreements with CCSF regarding parking, transit and roadway access through City College. But despite assurances that this would happen…it hasn’t.

We’ve been told for years that this project is a collaboration with CCSF. Yet there’s never been a written agreement with this assurance. The Planning Commission must not rule on a project that doesn’t consider the needs of City College! We need to stop this train before it leaves the station. The future of students at City College is at stake.

Please write the Planning Commission NOW and ask them to postpone the May 28 Balboa Reservoir Project Hearing until these important agreements between CCSF, the City, and the developers have been reached.

Thank you for all you do to save CCSF.
Public Lands for Public Good

Copoy and past to Send Urgent Message to:
SF Planning Commission
commissions.secretary@sfgov.org; joel.koppel@sfgov.org;
kathrin.moore@sfgov.org;
sue.diamond@sfgov.org;
frank.fung@sfgov.org;
theresa.imperial@sfgov.org;
milicent.johnson@sfgov.org;
aaron.starr@sfgov.org;

Be sure to Copy:
SF Board of Supervisors, CCSF Chancellor, and CCSF Board of Trustees
Matt.Haney@sfgov.org; MandelmanStaff@sfgov.org; Gordon.Mar@sfgov.org; Aaron.Peskin@sfgov.org; Dean.Preston@sfgov.org; Sandra.Fewer@sfgov.org; Hillary.Ronen@sfgov.org; Ahsha.Safai@sfgov.org; Catherine.Stefani@sfgov.org; Shamann.Walton@sfgov.org; Norman.Yee@sfgov.org; dgonzales@ccsf.edu; swilliams@ccsf.edu; ttemprano@ccsf.edu; bdavila@ccsf.edu; ivylee@ccsf.edu; alexrandolph@ccsf.edu; jrizzo@ccsf.edu; tselby@ccsf.edu; studenttrustee@mail.ccsf.edu;
Sample email
Subject line:
URGENT: Balboa Reservoir Approvals Must Be Delayed Until

Dear Commissioner,
The City and Balboa Reservoir developers were supposed to enter into written agreements with CCSF regarding parking, transit and roadway access through City College. This hasn’t happened yet!

This project is supposedly a collaboration with CCSF. Yet there’s no written agreement with this assurance.

You must postpone the May 28 Balboa Reservoir Project Hearing until these important agreements between CCSF, the City, and the developers have been reached.

Please do not rule on a project that doesn’t consider the needs of City College. The future of students at City College is at stake!

Sincerely,

www.publiclandsforpublicgood.org
publiclandsforpublicgood@gmail.com

May 14, 2020May 14, 2020

Employers Can Let Workers Change Health Plans Without Waiting

By Margot Sanger-Katz and Ron Lieber : nyt – excerpt (via linkedin editor)

The I.R.S. is giving companies flexibility to allow those decisions, and on pretax accounts for medical expenses and child care, outside an enrollment period.

The Internal Revenue Service on Tuesday made it easier for employers to allow workers to make adjustments to their health insurance plans and flexible spending accounts in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Normally, strict rules prevent employees from changing health insurance plans in the middle of a year. But the I.R.S. is giving employers a way to let workers make changes without waiting for the usual enrollment period.

Under the new guidance, employers can let their workers drop out of their health insurance if they have another option, or sign up if they failed to earlier in the year. Workers could also be allowed to add more family members to their plan, or switch from one workplace plan to another.

The change doesn’t require employers to offer these options; they must opt in if they want to give their employees the added flexibility…(more)

May 13, 2020May 13, 2020

The Risks – Know Them – Avoid Them

By Erin Bromage :

https://www.erinbromage.com/post/the-risks-know-them-avoid-them

Please read this link to learn about the author and background to these posts

It seems many people are breathing some relief, and I’m not sure why. An epidemic curve has a relatively predictable upslope and once the peak is reached, the back slope can also be predicted. We have robust data from the outbreaks in China and Italy, that shows the backside of the mortality curve declines slowly, with deaths persisting for months. Assuming we have just crested in deaths at 70k, it is possible that we lose another 70,000 people over the next 6 weeks as we come off that peak. That’s what’s going to happen with a lockdown.

As states reopen, and we give the virus more fuel, all bets are off. I understand the reasons for reopening the economy, but I’ve said before, if you don’t solve the biology, the economy won’t recover.

There are very few states that have demonstrated a sustained decline in numbers of new infections. Indeed, as of May 3rd the majority are still increasing and reopening. As a simple example of the USA trend, when you take out the data from New York and just look at the rest of the USA, daily case numbers are increasing. Bottom line: the only reason the total USA new case numbers look flat right now is because the New York City epidemic was so large and now it is being contained… (more)

May 9, 2020

SF has shelled out more than $30,000 a day for empty hotel rooms

By Trisha Thadani : sfchronicle – excerpt

For weeks, San Francisco has been bleeding tens of thousands of dollars a day on empty hotel rooms intended for frontline health care workers, whom the city expected to need to house during a surge of COVID-19 patients. So far, the city has avoided a huge influx of cases in its hospitals.

Now, city officials are expanding access to the hotels, in hopes of filling up the empty rooms and allowing other vulnerable populations that need a safe place to isolate during the coronavirus pandemic to move in.

The city originally leased 936 hotel rooms for frontline workers. But, officials said they overestimated the need, with about 80% of the rooms regularly sitting vacant for the past several weeks — costing the city more than $30,000 a day.

According to a new contract finalized Thursday, other at-risk populations will also be allowed to move into the rooms. Trent Rhorer, director of the Human Services Agency, said the city will focus on areas like the Mission, where preliminary results from a UCSF study revealedlow-wage workers who haven’t had the option of working from home and their families are particularly vulnerable to contracting the virus.

San Francisco decided to lease nearly 1,000 rooms for frontline workers after seeing how understaffed New York was when its surge hit, Rhorer said. Originally, officials thought they might have to fly in first responders to San Francisco from other areas in the state and country to help meet the demand. But, because San Francisco’s hospitals have yet to be overwhelmed by an influx of cases, Rhorer said the city did not end up needing as many rooms for frontline workers as initially anticipated.

It has been a costly overestimation: Each room costs about $76 a day. On Friday, for example, there were 751 unoccupied rooms, 445 of which the city pays for based on its contract, Rhorer said. That equates to $33,820 spent in one day — about $237,000 in a week — on empty rooms. Meanwhile, the city is bracing for at least a $1.7 billion budget shortfall due to the pandemic.

Supervisor Hillary Ronen, who represents the Mission, said it is “fantastic” more hotel rooms will be going to people in need in her district. But she is infuriated at how much money has been wasted over the past month. She said she has also heard from frontline workers that they didn’t know the hotel rooms were available to them.

“It is the epitome of poor management,” she said. “Every empty hotel room could save a life.”…

The hotel rooms have been a point of contention among the city departments, Board of Supervisors and homeless advocates since the pandemic began. Mayor London Breed and the Human Services Agency say they are moving as fast as possible to place homeless people in hotels… (more)

May 9, 2020

State Legislature Continues Its Assault On Local Zoning Decisions

By Edward Ring : californiaglobe – excerpt

YIMBYs support legislation that mandates high density

With the introduction of the latest housing density mandate, AB 725 in the California state legislature, the battle between state control and local control in California intensifies. At the same time, the pandemic crisis and its economic consequences add additional complexity to an already complex issue.

The debate over California’s housing policies offers an unusual combination: vehement disagreement between two bitterly opposed groups, yet within both groups are factions holding thoroughly divergent political ideologies.

This probably should come as no surprise. California’s housing crisis, and the policies that created it, incorporate big, challenging issues: income inequality, how to treat the homeless, environmental protection, public finance. Libertarians and leftists, along with Republicans and Democrats, are lining up on both sides of the debate, confounding easy categorization…

Some of the bills that Livable California have opposed must be seen to be believed. AB 3173 (still active) provides incentives for developers to build 80 square foot “micro-units” – at least that’s a bit larger than the 70 square feet that the American Correctional Association recommends as the minimum size for a prison cell! SB 902 automatically up-zones single family areas to six units or more per parcel. AB 1279 designates “opportunity areas” where housing could be up-zoned to high rises accommodating as many as 120 units per half-acre….

The uncomfortable truth is that years of neglected infrastructure, defacto rationing, and urban containment legislation have already taken away much of the local control that would have allowed Californians to expand their cities and towns, and keep housing affordable.

Livable California, a genuine grassroots movement, has the potential to reverse this trend. If successful, they may eventually alter the policy driven economic conditions that prohibit lasting solutions. The YIMBY movement, on the other hand, funded by billionaires, will never solve California’s housing crisis, because they aren’t questioning the doctrine of densification. But so what? Their donors will see their real estate portfolio investments soar into bubbleland, as they virtue signal all the way to the bank…(more)

COVID-19 has turned the tide against density in a way no one could have imagined. The media has taken a new view of the negative impacts of density that many have warned about as we see, first hand, how dangerous urban lifestyles can be. No where has the virus spread more rapidly than in large urban centers with major public transit networks that force close contact with anonymous strangers and long commutes. Transit directors know they cannot continue this way and it is time for the all city officials to get the same message that cities have to change if they are to survive.

April 19, 2020April 19, 2020

CORONAVIRUS: CLEANLINESS + TIPS

SEE THE SUGGESTIONS: DETAILS HERE

April 17, 2020April 17, 2020

Economic slowdown is a new factor in determining housing quotas

By Elaine Goodman : padailypost – excerpt

Housing-production quotas for cities are now being developed for 2022 to 2030, and some officials said they’re worried that the quotas won’t account for the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The discussion of the quotas, also known as Regional Housing Needs Allocation or RHNA, came up last week during a meeting of the Association of Bay Area Governments’ executive board.

Los Altos City Councilwoman Anita Enander predicted a “near-term disaster” for cities if growth models that the quotas are based on are wrong…(more)

April 17, 2020April 17, 2020

The Coming Age of Dispersion

By Joel Kotkin : quillette – excerpt

As of this writing, the long-term effects of the coronavirus pandemic remain uncertain. But one possible consequence is an acceleration of the end of the megacity era. In its place, we may now be witnessing the outlines of a new, and necessary, dispersion of population, not only in the wide open spaces of North America and Australia, but even in the megacities of the developing world. Much of this has been driven by high housing prices and growing social disorder in our core cities, as well as the steady rise of online commerce and remote working, now the fastest growing means of “commuting” in the United States.

Pandemics naturally thrive in large multicultural cities, where people live “cheek by jowl” and travel to and from other countries is a fact of international tourism and commerce. Europe’s rapidly advancing infection rate is, to some extent, the product of its weak border controls, one of the EU’s greatest accomplishments. Across the continent, cities have become the primary centers of infection. Half of all COVID-19 cases in Spain, for example, have occurred in Madrid while the Milan region, with its cosmopolitan population and economy, accounts for half of all cases in Italy and almost three-fifths of the deaths… (more)

April 16, 2020April 16, 2020

Sloat Garden Center likely to close for new mixed-use development

by Sasha Perigo : hoodline – excerpt

It’s been over a decade since plans to demolish the Outer Sunset’s Sloat Garden Center (2700 Sloat Blvd.) were first announced. Now, it appears that the proposed mixed-use development on the site — a neighborhood staple since the 1950s — may finally be happening.

On March 30, owner Dave Straus submitted dueling proposals for redeveloping the site to the Planning Commission. The first proposal calls for an 85-foot building with a total of 213 condominiums, 49 of which would be “affordable”—sold at prices below market rate (BMR).

At 125 feet tall, the other proposal is larger; it would have 283 condos, 85 of them affordable. In both cases, the units would be condominiums built for sale, not rental apartments. Market rate units are expected to start at $200,000. BMR buyers can apply for lower priced units through a lottery…(more)

No more gardens or plants in the city. Is that the future of San Francisco? We managed to save the Flowermart, sort of, yet, we lose the largest garden supply company in San Francisco? Wow! This truly is a goldrush where we plow over everything in site to erect the towers to the sky, a la Miami Beach.

April 7, 2020

Do NOT Re-Zone the Balboa Reservoir!

Stop the sale of public land, or at last continue the decision.
Tell SF Planning Commission: Do NOT Re-zone the Balboa Reservoir!

Thursday, April 9, 1PM – agenda
SF Planning Commission Meeting Videoconference and Call-in
Stream the live meeting: ww.sfgovtv.org
A public comment call-in line number will be provided on the Department’s webpage http://www.sfplanning.org and during the live SFGovTV broadcast.

Agenda Item 16b: Consideration of Initiation of “General Plan Amendments” for the Balboa Reservoir Project. This 315 page document contains amendments to the Balboa Park Station Area Plan (2009). If the Commission approves the Initiation of the General Plan Amendments meeting, they could schedule a hearing as early as April 30th to take action, such as re-zoning the land.

Currently the reservoir land is zoned as “P” (Public) which does not allow private use of public property. Re-zoning it to “Balboa Reservoir Special Use District” would allow privatization. Additionally, this proposed re-zoning would allow the current 40 feet height limit to be increased to 78 ft.

These decisions pave the way for the construction of the Balboa Reservoir Project. Please consider sending comments to the Planning Commissioners: commissions.secretary@sfgov.org
See Contacts and talking points. here