By Juneau Yang : missionlocal – excerpt
Richmond residents want mayor’s upzoning plan to change. Lurie says time for change is over.
Is Lurie succumbing to Wiener’s Whip:
It was Mayor Daniel Lurie’s first town hall to discuss his plan to upzone the low-slung Richmond District, among several other neighborhoods, mostly in the west and north of the city.
As the night wore on, the crowd was tough, and the normally even-keeled mayor grew increasingly feisty.
Residents asked repeatedly how he would protect the district’s rent-controlled housing from being demolished and replaced with new, market-rate units, and keep tenants from being displaced…
Why couldn’t the mayor’s zoning plan be changed to provide more protections for the local businesses and residents of the Richmond? Surely, there must be alternatives?
Lurie’s response was, essentially, that protections against these kinds of demolitions doexist: The city has some of the strongest rent-control protections in the state, he said, and that will continue under the new plan.
Due to these protections, for the past decade when the city’s eastern neighborhoods have already been upzoned, demolition of rent controlled units was “extremely rare.” On average, only seven units of multifamily housing were demolished every year, added Rachael Tanner, director of citywide planning…
Any more compromises, Lurie added, and the state could impose the “builder’s remedy,” and completely remove San Francisco’s ability to approve or reject future housing projects within city boundaries… (more)
If we hear this excuse one more time… There is a good possibility that the state laws recently enacted for a small percentage of cities, will not be on the books for long. SB 79 only won by 1 vote in both houses after the bill was exempted from a lot of the communities that voted to oppose it. As we know quite well, no law is written in stone. Our next round of state representatives and our next governor may vote to reverse a lot of the damage our the current lineup of state reps has done.
What is All the fuss about SB 79
Reading materials on SB 79: You don’t have to read them all, just look at the headlines and the number of articles being published about the growing opposition to Wiener and SB 79 from all over the state of California. Find out why the bill barely passed, after exempting most of the state from the bill.
Our Senator Wiener had to stick it to us! And the rest of the state knows he will come after them soon enough.
Key opponents include cities like Palo Alto, Cupertino, and Los Angeles, along with organizations like Cal Cities (League of California Cities).
Despite changes, critics remain unswayed by housing bill SB 79
Opinion: Don’t blame CEQA for California’s housing problems.
SB79: For preservation in Los Angeles, there is no greater threat
California affordable housing programs are on the chopping block after Supreme Court ruling