Politics

These are SFs main office-to-housing hurdles

By Zain Jaffer : sfexaminer – excerpt

The San Francisco Bay Area, just like many parts of the United States, is suffering from a housing shortage, aggravated by construction pauses brought on during the COVID-19 pandemic and the Federal Reserve’s interest-rate hikes of the last few years.

It’s only natural to consider converting some of the vacant office spaces and buildings dotting The City’s skyline to residential use, mainly because they are already there and are a negative weight to many bank and real-estate company balance sheets because the forecast rental incomes aren’t showing up.

A 2023 SPUR research paper claimed that empty downtown San Francisco offices — extending from the Northern Waterfront to Mission Bay — could accommodate more than 14,000 homes. But why are there so many vacant office spaces? It’s worth breaking understanding what makes up The City’s commercial real-estate stock…

Often, it’s better to simply demolish an older building that already has zero book value — or fully depreciated — for the underlying land and build a new residential building. Higher commercial-property taxes need to be adjusted for residential rates, plus there are transfer taxes and recertification costs, all aside from rebuilding costs….(More)

Politics

SFMTA’s Plan For 465 New Homes Atop a Bus Yard Just Doubled In Price

by Adam Brinklow : thefrisc – excerpt

 

100% affordable housing is tough to pull off. SF’s transit agency will front up to $100M extra just to get the $2B project underway.

Best-case scenario: If funding comes through, a new Potrero Yard bus facility will include 465 units of affordable housing perched on top. SF’s transit agency just said it needs to front as much as $100 million extra for the project to get off the ground. (SFPlanning)

The city’s cash-strapped transit agency says it will pay some of the developer’s costs, up to $100 million, then hope to recoup the money through a complicated buyback plan.

Earlier this year, The Frisc reported that the project’s 465 homes could shrink to about 100 homes – a Plan B if funding didn’t come through. Now the only way to keep the project moving, homes or no homes, is through an unusual twist: the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency is going to pay all infrastructure costs upfront instead of splitting them with the developer… (more)

One reason why the voters are not supporting more money for Muni through taxes and or bonds if they can stop it. What happened to the original goal of running a first rate transit system? When did SFMTA decide to branch out into other risky businesses? What rose do the voters and citizens of SF have in this scheme, other than being an ATM machine for MTA?

Transportation

Tumlin reflects on his tenure leading the SFMTA

KTVU

SFMTA Executive Director Jeff Tumlin reflects on the time he spent leading the agency… Direct of MUNI,  Julie Kirschbaum will take over the department until Lurie chooses a new director.

For those of us who did not appreciate Tumlin, here is a little history.

Déjà vu:  Tumlin out as city consultant
by Ashley Archibald – March 15, 2013 : smdp – excerpt

CITY HALL — City officials confirmed Wednesday that they would no longer work with traffic and circulation consultant Jeffrey Tumlin after comments on an online biography proved even more controversial than the parking policies he espoused.

In the bio, Tumlin wrote that Santa Monica politics “had been dominated by NIMBYs who used traffic fear as their primary tool for stopping development.” The reference, indeed the entire section on Santa Monica, had been removed as of Wednesday.

The comment spurred outrage amongst residents, who called for Tumlin’s dismissal. Additionally, Santa Monica Coalition for a Livable City, or SMCLC, wrote an adjoining letter expressing distaste for Tumlin’s parking policies, which involve building less parking than currently required for new development and opening up existing lots to increase supply in some areas.

The net effect would be to drive down costs of development, and therefore the price of housing, and ostensibly cause fewer car trips by attracting fewer cars based on the premise that you will not drive where you cannot park.
The theory is embraced by planning professionals, although it constitutes “a huge transition,” said Juan Matute, of the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies, in January when Tumlin’s proposal first ricocheted through Santa Monica.
That holds little water for Santa Monicans aghast that large amounts of new development could ever result in the “no new net PM trips” promise enshrined in the 2010 Land Use and Circulation Element, a planning document that is supposed to dictate development in Santa Monica for decades to come.
“Mr. Tumlin’s central premise — that new development would yield no additional traffic — is an unsound prediction without basis,” SMCLC wrote. “It is fanciful social experimentation, embraced only by developers.”
It’s unclear if those unpopular ideas will exit along with Tumlin.… (more)

Look at the date on this article. We were cubically warned about him about the time this article came out. He claimed his firm had done some work in San Francisco that was not done by anyone. The product did not exist. So much for the wasted years and millions of dollars spent fulfilling his dreams on our streets. This document partially edited by Tumlin, because the treatise of sorts for those exposing his beliefs in a lifestyle for special interests. How many people and city authorities have been hoodwinked by this guy and his ideas on how to control the masses? How many cities have seen rents go down as promised when they were densified? And how many people have given up the privacy and freedom of owning their owning a car?

path-to-a-livable-city-1-pdf.jpg

The Path to a livable City, published in 2002 by such luminaries as  Gabriel Metcalf, edited by Steven Bodzin of the Congress for New Urbanism, Jeffrey Tumlin of Nelson\Nygaard Consulting, and Shannon Dodge and Doug Shoemaker of the Non-Profit Housing Association of Northern California. Lydia Tan of Bridge Housing helped the group gain perspective on housing issues. And thanks to the Bay Area Transportation and Land Use Coalition, on whose regional leadership Transportation for a Livable City (TLC) will rely heavily.

 

Politics

AC Transit director decries ‘sweetheart deal’ for outgoing general manager

by Jose Fermoso : Oaklandside – except

Ward 3 Director Sarah Syed said other board directors approved the agreement in a closed session to avoid public scrutiny.

AC Transit Ward 3 Director Sarah Syed, speaking at the agency’s monthly board meeting on Wednesday, accused her fellow directors of approving an expensive “sweetheart” settlement deal for the outgoing general manager, Michael Hursh.

Syed said the agreement has Hursh staying on as a senior adviser with a complete “executive CEO” salary and benefits but no work expectations.

According to Transparent California, the state’s public pay and pension database, Hursh made $556,045 in 2022, the last year his information is available.

“The deal allows the General Manager to seek and accept other employment without restriction,” Syed wrote in her statement, which she read in full at the board meeting “At a time when we should be earning the public’s trust to save our agency from the fiscal cliff, this sweetheart deal is a colossal misjudgment.”

Syed accused other directors of violating the state’s Brown Act, a law mandating open government meetings, by voting for this agreement in a closed session from which she was excluded. … (more)

CEQA, Politics, Transportation

Sloat Street Quickbuild gives neighbors another reason to Recall Engardio

Who dreamed up this Sloat project and when was it first announced to the neighbors? The lack of transparency is one of the reasons Engardio is being recalled.

This project was sprung on us at the very last minute and passed by the SFMTA Board at a meeting under questionable  procedures. Director Heminger who voted to oppose the approval, questioned the wisdom of rushing this through.

Isn’t Sloat the preferred route for the cars to take to get to the beach and zoo now the Great Highway is going to be off-limits? Or is the plan to limit public access to Ocean Beach to bikers and walkers? No more families loading up the beach and picnic supplies for a beach day?

Politics

Why an ex-NYC official sees office-to-housing path in SF

Chris Fraley was 26 when he returned from vacation in 1995 to find a memo on his desk with two paragraphs of fresh New York state law authorizing an incentive program for spurring conversion of offices to homes in lower Manhattan, which in the early 1990s had widespread office vacancies.

Over the next two years, Fraley played a key role in setting up a program credited with facilitating the conversion of offices into nearly 13,000 homes — and he said he believes something similar could happen today in downtown San Francisco, which currently has a historic office-vacancy rate of 36.9%, according to commerical real-estate firm CBRE.

“It was exciting,” said Fraley, who was founding director of the Lower Manhattan Residential Conversion Program…

“San Francisco has just unbelievable potential in its downtown, because it has such a strong foundation already,” he said. “Now is a real opportunity to create a vibrant, mixed-use 24-hour neighborhood.”

The honey that attracted all those New York property owners was a combination of time-limited abatements on existing taxes and exemptions on increased values following office-to-residence conversions. Recent studies have shown that the cost of conversions is generally too high to justify the investment without incentives.

San Francisco will have the opportunity next year to pursue its own tax-break initiative inspired by the New York program as a result of a new state law going into effect on Jan. 1…

Fraley said the development activity in New York City led to far higher property-tax revenues once the tax grace periods ran out… (more)

CEQA, Housing, Politics

LA rezoning could displace tenants from rent-controlled units

By  TRD Staff : therealdeal – excerpt

New building incentives would put rent-stabilized buildings at risk of demolition…

ACT-LA coalition’s Laura Raymond; mayor Karen Bass

A Los Angeles plan to rezone multifamily housing could put tenants in rent-controlled apartments on the curb.

A Citywide Housing Incentive Program ordinance to be heard by the City Council’s Planning and Land Use Management Committee on Tuesday would supercharge building incentives for developers while displacing tenants in older units, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The proposed legislation would give builders a break on height and parking if they include a certain percentage of affordable units and the property is near transit, a major street and jobs and schools.

Projects that are 100 percent affordable would be eligible for incentives across a wider part of the city.

The incentives would apply in single-family zones only if a property is owned by a public agency or a faith-based organization, which accounts for 1 percent of the city’s single-family lots, according to the Times.

Instead, most of the parcels that fall under the proposed development incentives are in residential neighborhoods zoned for apartments…(more)

RELATED:

Audit finds flaws in state’s housing allocation goals
SANDAG Board of Diretors Meeting (March 22, 2024)

Politics

Gavin Newsom family buys $9M mansion in posh Marin town

By Joe Burn, Sam Mondros, Michael McLaughlin, and Max Harrison-Caldwell : sfstandard – excerpt

Said one neighbor, “He’s not getting a pie from me.”…

Gov. Gavin Newsom just snapped up a new Bay Area home: a hidden mansion in the Marin County town of Kentfield, fitted with outdoor sculptures, a guest house, a handful of walk-in closets, and a swimming pool and spa.

The governor and his wife paid around $9 million — 7% more than the asking price — for the house on less than an acre, in a deal that closed Thursday.

The house has six bedrooms and five and a half bathrooms across 5,609 square feet. A prime example of California modernism, it has numerous floor-to-ceiling windows with views of Mount Tamalpais.

Sources confirmed that the Newsom family bought the home through an LLC. The address is being withheld due to security concerns… (more)

How many ADUs should he put on this site, or how many would he like US to put on the site? And how many servants will it take to keep the place in order?

Politics

Coastal Conservancy Hybrid Board Meeting

Coastal Conservancy Hybrid Board Meeting
November 21, 10 AM
Elihu M Harris State Building Room 2 – 2nd Floor
1515 Clay St., Oakland CA 94612

E. Consideration and possible authorization to disburse up to $300,000 of funds granted to the Conservancy by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission to implement its Coastal Zone Management Program.

21. Consideration and possible authorization to disburse up to $1,000,000 to San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department to implement the Upper Great Highway Climate Resilience Project, consisting of conducting technical studies and community engagement, and preparing conceptual alternatives to prepare Upper Great Highway, from Lincoln Way to Sloat Boulevard, for climate change impacts in the City and County of San Francisco.

Watch only on Zoom webcast link: If you do not wish to provide verbal comments, please view the webcast at this site: https://cal-span.org
Watch and Comments on Zoom webinar or by Telephone:  Register to participate on Zoom webinar here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_5sk3KafyQDy7v54oiIgC-Q
Politics

Up-Zoning Well Resourced Neighborhoods in San Francisco

Via email By Adam Pardew : bizjournals – excerpt

Under pressure from the state, the city is grappling with making space for more homes…

They are eyeing what they describe as “well resourced” neighborhoods.

… Residents of those areas with good resources — Cow Hollow, Pacific Heights and the

Sunset, for instance — have gotten plenty of press for their opposition to the rezoning

effort. Lori Brooke is the co-founder of Neighborhoods United SF, a coalition of

neighborhood groups who are organizing against upzoning. She said there’s no way San

Francisco is going to meet its RHNA goals even with the rezoning, so punishment from

the state is inevitable. Furthermore, Brooke said, the city is already facing unique

penalties, like annual reviews of its progress toward housing construction targets (the

state evaluates other cities every four years)…(more)

Where did this idea of good resources come from? What and who determines which neighborhoods possess good resources? If a neighborhood has good schools, adequate fuel and infrastructure sources now, how far will those resources stretch once the neighborhood population doubles? Will it continue to have adequate resources?

Will the water and fuel and schools continue to be adequate when the population shifts to accommodate a lot of new people?

Look what happened to downtown neighborhoods where density was added for a hint of what is to come. Adding more jobs, housing and resources did not make downtown SF a safer, better more friendly and attractive neighborhood. Removing cars did not improve Market Street, removing traffic removed people.

Show me one neighborhood that was been improved by adding density. I don’t see one. What I see is that most of the taxbase has moved into the stable neighborhoods while the money continues to pour into those new towers in hopes of a new renaissance that resides in the minds of some mega moguls.