By Mike Ege : sfstandard – excerpt
Legislation to bring “gentle density” to many of San Francisco’s neighborhoods by allowing single-family homes to convert to smaller-scale apartments got a stiff arm from city lawmakers.
The bill, sponsored by Supervisor Myrna Melgar, was expected to clear the Board of Supervisors’ Land Use and Transportation Committee and be approved by the full board on Tuesday.
Instead, it was hit with last-minute amendments that postponed the recommendation of the bill for another week.
The delay and hostile public comments from neighborhood groups that followed illustrate how getting the city’s more affluent, suburban-flavored neighborhoods to accept more density is still an uphill battle, even after passage of legislation in Sacramento to boost construction…
Eric Brooks, an activist with Our City San Francisco, conceded that “this conversation sounds better than the ones we’ve had in the past,” but also said that “part of the reason folks are so on about this is that we do not trust anything the Planning Department staff would do.”…(more)
As I recall Calvin Welch described the difference between affordable housing that many fear will be demolished and rent controlled market rate housing, which he determined will be the results of passing Family Housing Opportunity Special Use District Ordinance #230026, as it is currently proposed. Because as we know, any housing we build today will never be as affordable as that we may be tearing down.