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.

Breed’s and Weiner’s Upzoning Plan Criticized by Opponents

By Thomas K. Pendergast : richmondsunsetnews – excerpt

Efforts by State Sen. Scott Wiener and San Francisco Mayor London Breed to rapidly increase the City’s housing supply are getting roasted by advocates, activists and politicians concerned about land speculators fattening their portfolios at the expense of small business owners and residential tenants.

“We’d like to prevent the displacement of small businesses and currently affordable rental housing which are the consequences of when you do blanket upzoning and you don’t have a thoughtful way to grow housing in the City,” said Lori Brooke of Neighborhoods United SF, which she said is made up of 60 neighborhood associations across the City now pushing back against Breed’s proposal to upzone major commercial corridors throughout the west side of the City.

Upzoning is a term used to describe changes to zoning codes made for increasing the amount of development allowed in the future on any given parcel. In the Richmond District, for example, the standard zoning for most parcels is 40-feet tall or four stories.

“We want to promote affordable workforce housing, which is the moderate, low and very-low-income units. We want to push for smart, affordable growth without overbuilding the luxury housing,” Brooke said.

They also want to “reset” the housing crisis narrative…(more)

Reality Check wanted! Voters will make some important decisions as they weigh in one the candidates and their plans on how to grow the city. After months of media coverage their can’t be too many people who are not aware of the importance of the density issues that effect all the neighborhoods. Throw in the street closure issues and the next city leaders should have a good idea of how the majority of the voters feel and what they want to pay for.

State agency: A year makes all the difference for SF housing development

By Natalia Gurevich : sfexaminer – excerpt (includes audio)

View from Potrero Hill House deck

What a difference a year made for San Francisco in the eyes of state housing officials.

The California Department of Housing and Community Development gave The City a Prohousing Designation on Friday, as part of a larger program recognizing jurisdictions that have proactively sought to speed up housing construction by enacting policy changes. It also includes access to state funding.

State officials issued the San Francisco Housing Policy and Practice Review a year ago Friday, strongly criticizing The City’s sluggish and complex processes for approving and building new homes…(more)

I’m not so sure about the year ago part, but, the tone from Sacramento has conveniently changed as of late. If San Francisco is all of a sudden in compliance does that mean we are dropping Builder’s Remedy, or are we in compliance because we are under Builder’s Remedy? Is this turn-about about protecting our Mayor by making the city look good? Stories abound about crime being down and the Muni is all of a sudden doing better. Will this honeymoon season continue after the elections are over? One can only hope so

RELATED

Stare Labels SF as a pro-housing city, one year after criticizing city’s slow housing progress. Leading some of us to wonder whether or not the party is waking up to the possibility that the state’s position may not be supported by the voters and the heavy-handed nature of the state overrides may be turning people away from the party line in other areas. In most regards, civil rights are on the ballot this year.
We shall see if this sudden friendly stance continues after the votes are counted. The voters may take out some revenge this year in a way that may not be that pleasant for the ruling class.

 

How Billionaire Investors Are Disrupting the U.S. Housing Market

By Chuck Collins : inequality – excerpt

Our new report breaks down how wealth concentration is depriving Americans of access to affordable living spaces.

The housing affordability crisis – and how to solve it – has become a major focus during election season, for good reason. Millions of American families struggle to afford and keep a roof over their heads, find themselves unsheltered, or have become frustrated in the hope of owning their own home.

The over-focus on expanding housing supply through for-profit development misses a key contributor to the housing crisis: the concentration of wealth and power. The challenges of the U.S. housing crisis go beyond supply or fixing local land use regulations. The billionaire class and billionaire-backed private equity investors have become a driving force in the U.S. housing crisis.

A new report, Billionaire Blowback on Housing: How concentrated wealth disrupts housing markets and worsens the housing affordability crisis, coauthored by the Institute for Policy Studies and Popular Democracy, examines the myriad ways that billionaire investors are harming local housing markets and diminishing the supply of affordable housing… (more)

RELATED:
Billionaire Blowback on Housing

A comment:

Here’s why they want to up-zone to build luxury units in mid- to high-rise buildings as this article correctly points out:
“Wealthy investors are acquiring property and holding units vacant, so that in many communities the number of vacant units greatly exceeds the number of unhoused people.”
Investors can hold luxury units vacant ONLY in buildings that come with doormen and security apparatus to keep empty units secure.  You can’t do this in a 4 to 6-unit building with only 4 floors and hence, the push for taller buildings. 

Fisherman’s Wharf future divides SF boaters, port

On Oct 14, 2024, at 4:26 PM, zrants <zrants@gmail.com> wrote:

By James Salazar : sfexaminer – excerpt

The Port of San Francisco and Fisherman’s Wharf business owners agree parts of the area need maintenance and repair. That’s where the agreement ends.

The Port Commission voted Tuesday to endorse the term sheet for a $550 million revitalization of Pier 45 and a parking lot currently operated by SP+ Parking, beginning progress on an effort that would construct a seafood market, food hall, and events center and performing arts space that port officials say will revitalize the wharf’s surrounding area.

But local fishermen contend the area’s many vacant storefronts and lack of industrial facilities are matters that can be handled in the immediate future, and more quickly restoring economic activity than the Pier 45 project.

Sarah Bates, a member of the San Francisco Crab Boat Owners Association, told The Examiner that she and her group members have “deep concerns” about Pier 45’s proposed redevelopment. She said portions of the proposal could displace longtime waterfront tenants. A group known as Revitalized Fisherman’s Wharf LLC, which includes former Boudin Bakery owner Lou Giraudo and Mission Bay Development Group’s Seth Hamalian, initially sent the proposal unsolicited to the port in February 2023.

The Triangle Parking Lot, owned by SP+ Parking, would house a beverage garden and outdoor plaza, a visitor center, a public open space and short-term vacation rentals. Of the project’s preliminary estimated cost of $548 million, $185.9 million would go toward infrastructure investments along the pier. Officials also plan on seismically retrofitting the seawall. Construction of the project’s first phase isn’t expected to begin until 2028 at the earliest.

Bates said additions like the beer garden could be located anywhere in The City, rather than carving out space along the wharf.

“As working fishing families, we can’t simply relocate for the sake of an amusement park,” Bates said. “Fisherman’s Wharf should be for fishing.”…

(more)

Are we looking at another issue for voters to weigh in on? A new mayor may think otherwise. Let’s ask the candidates where they stand on this one shall w
e?

Fisherman’s Wharf future divides SF boaters, port

By James Salazar : sfexaminer – excerpt

The Port of San Francisco and Fisherman’s Wharf business owners agree parts of the area need maintenance and repair. That’s where the agreement ends.

The Port Commission voted Tuesday to endorse the term sheet for a $550 million revitalization of Pier 45 and a parking lot currently operated by SP+ Parking, beginning progress on an effort that would construct a seafood market, food hall, and events center and performing arts space that port officials say will revitalize the wharf’s surrounding area.

But local fishermen contend the area’s many vacant storefronts and lack of industrial facilities are matters that can be handled in the immediate future, and more quickly restoring economic activity than the Pier 45 project.

Sarah Bates, a member of the San Francisco Crab Boat Owners Association, told The Examiner that she and her group members have “deep concerns” about Pier 45’s proposed redevelopment. She said portions of the proposal could displace longtime waterfront tenants. A group known as Revitalized Fisherman’s Wharf LLC, which includes former Boudin Bakery owner Lou Giraudo and Mission Bay Development Group’s Seth Hamalian, initially sent the proposal unsolicited to the port in February 2023.

The Triangle Parking Lot, owned by SP+ Parking, would house a beverage garden and outdoor plaza, a visitor center, a public open space and short-term vacation rentals. Of the project’s preliminary estimated cost of $548 million, $185.9 million would go toward infrastructure investments along the pier. Officials also plan on seismically retrofitting the seawall. Construction of the project’s first phase isn’t expected to begin until 2028 at the earliest.

Bates said additions like the beer garden could be located anywhere in The City, rather than carving out space along the wharf.

“As working fishing families, we can’t simply relocate for the sake of an amusement park,” Bates said. “Fisherman’s Wharf should be for fishing.”…

(more)

Are we looking at another issue for voters to weigh in on? A new mayor may think otherwise. Let’s ask the candidates where they stand on this one shall w
e?

Saratoga vineyard owner was fined $120K for providing free housing to his employee.

Via nextdoor: “Saratoga, Calif. (AP) — A California vineyard owner is suing Santa Clara County after officials fined him for allowing his longtime employee to live in an RV on his property for years.

Michael Ballard, whose family owns Savannah-Chanelle Vineyards in a town south of San Francisco, alleges he was fined a total of more than $120,000 after the county said he violated local zoning laws that ban anyone from living in an RV on public or private property, according to the The Mercury News.

Marcelino Martinez, manager of the vineyard, which is around 2.6 million square feet (243,000 square meters), said his family lost their lease on a trailer they were living in years ago and had limited options for affordable housing in the area. The Ballard family agreed to allow them to live in an RV at the vineyards. Martinez, his wife and children have lived there for free since, 2013, according to The Mercury News.

“I couldn’t make a family homeless for arbitrary reasons,” Ballard told the newspaper. “The human impact exceeded any damage or nuisance that their continued living in the trailer was going to create.”

But in July 2019, the county began fining the Ballards $1,000 daily for the RV, then lowered the penalty to $250 a day, the vineyard owner said.

The county disputed that it fined Ballard $120,000 and said he refused to agree to deadlines to reduce the violations, according to the newspaper. Officials have made multiple offers to drastically cut fines if he removes the RV, they said.

The county was imposing “excessive fines” and violating the U.S. Constitution with its actions against Ballard, his attorney Paul Avelar told The Mercury News.

Ballard doesn’t agree with the county spending so much time penalizing him when it is facing greater issues.

“Just drive anywhere in the county, there are mobile homes parked all over the place. There are encampments everywhere you go,” he told the newspaper. “The problem is obvious and overt, yet they’re choosing to prosecute us in probably the least intrusive example of this, where we are letting someone live on private property in a private location and we’re not bothering anyone.””

Vancouver housing expert questioning consensus finds a following in SF

By Keith Menconi : sfexaminer – excerpt (Includes audio)

Want to solve California’s affordability crisis? The popular answer these days is to allow developers to build more homes. Supporters say it’s an intuitive solution that follows the basic logic of supply and demand laid out in Economics 101.

But as San Francisco city officials move forward with a controversial plan to allow much denser housing development across large swaths of The City, some residents who oppose that effort are embracing a heterodox housing researcher who argues that the mainstream housing consensus is simply wrong.

On a Saturday afternoon last month, a crowd of about 200 massed inside Noe Valley Ministry to hear the housing homily delivered by Patrick Condon, a professor of urban design at The University of British Columbia. Condon had come all the way from Vancouver to offer up a warning: “You’re in for a big disappointment.”

A former city planner, Condon has become a prominent voice in Vancouver’s own housing debate. He told the gathered crowd he has seen firsthand how increasing density doesn’t solve the problem of housing unaffordability. Despite a massive development boom in recent decades that has made Vancouver one of the densest cities in North America, housing prices there are among the highest on the continent.

“Unfortunately, it will take 30 years for you to realize that you were wrong,” he said...(more)

Is Kamala Harris a Yimby? Not if you read her actual housing plans

By Calvin Welch : 48hills – excerpt

The Harris platform calls for huge government spending on affordable housing—along with strict market regulation.

The real estate industry-dominated press is busy claiming that Vice President Kamala Harris has fully embraced the industry’s front group (aka Yimbys) position and that that position has swept the entire Democratic Party (for example, see The Atlantic). The argument goes that since Harris has laid out a housing position and since that position makes the common-sense claim that we need to build more affordablehousing, it is a Yimby position.

But when we look at the details of the Harris (actually Biden) position on housing, it differs in fundamental ways from the classic Yimby position, at least as practiced in the Yimbys adopted hometown, San Francisco—and is most different from the policies of the Yimby’s San Francisco favorite, London Breed.

In fact, the Harris program, as outlined on her web page and press releases, far more resembles the program of her kindergarten schoolmate Sup. Aaron Peskin than the “build housing at all income levels” mantra of Breed…

The details of the Harris (Biden) program can be found here ( Harris Walz Housing Plan), here (Harris market controls ) and here (Lower Housing Costs). These are the most detailed housing proposals made by a national party since Harry Truman’s proposals in the 1948 election. They commit some $40 billion in new federal funding for affordable housing development—in stark contrast to the Obama Administration, which simply failed to appropriate new federal funding after the housing crash in 2008, choosing to bail out banks and Wall Street instead, allowing the banks to foreclose on tens of thousands of homeowners…(more)

We just posted a series of clips from a meeting with President Peskin that cover his ideas about housing, finance and governance that are on the November ballot:

Conservatorship:

https://youtu.be/lKRj_ARX9c8

Legacy Business:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9HApAeOKCs

Aaron on Commissions:
https://youtu.be/4NpBeF8bF8M

Inspector General:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkkspAy-qG0

Terry Glavin: What if our housing crisis can’t be fixed?

By Terry Galvin : nationalist – excerpt

No easy way to return Canada’s residential real estate markets to ‘normal’

It’s a puzzle. Whatever its answer, its consequences are likely to foment an upheaval in Canada that the coming defeat of Justin Trudeau’s Liberals and the election of a Conservative government should not be expected to forestall.

The puzzle, by the reckoning of urban planner, landscape architect, author and University of British Columbia professor Patrick Condon, can be put this way.

Many, if not most, Canadians under the age of 35 are unlikely to ever own a place of their own. Canadians earn a bit better than $57,000 annually, on average. But you need more than three times that income to afford the mortgage on a typical Toronto condo.

Average house prices in Canada have gone from $435,000 to $794,000 since Trudeau’s Liberals were elected in 2015, and average rents have risen from $966 to $2,187.

Here’s the puzzle, according to Condon: “For leaders across the entire political spectrum to have landed on a response to this critical problem that is essentially the same, and is entirely wrong, is unprecedented. It’s a very unique circumstance, when you think about it.”

The responses to the “housing crisis” from the Liberals, the Conservatives and the New Democrats differ in their polemics and their particulars, but they all land on the same square: Do nothing to undermine the market value of residential real estate, pour everything into boosting supply, and hey presto, housing becomes more affordable.

None of it will work, says Condon, author of Broken City: Land Speculation, Inequality and Urban Crisis(more)

The housing crisis might be fixed if the government gets out of the way.

In my opinion governments killed the free market when they stepped into the role of planning our futures for us by trying to control the market. Things did not go according to their predictions, but they refuse to accept responsibility for the economy they created and forced on us. Not everyone supported their theories and now there is upheaval around the world because people don’t trust governments to fix what they broke.

We have heard a lot about the problems cities are facing with speculation and rising costs of living that is killing the middle class. Patrick Condon seems to have put his finger on what many are calling out as the major culprit. Every city in the world is doing the same thing. There are no variables left for comparison. No room to experiment with other ways of operating a city. We are caught in a mire of our own making that is turning into an AI nightmare. Government has removed too many options for the market to experiment with different methods for driving down costs by eleviating options.

None of the markets under similar legal constraints have succeeded in bringing down the costs of real estate so far. Perhaps it is time for some new options. If California wants to be the leader they claim to be, perhaps starting to remove the state overloads from the picture to allow new options would be the first step in discovering a more balanced approach. Voters have at least one state bill that could shift the state control mechanism. In voters in California remove the state rent control to allow more flexibility among cities, we might start to see a shift in how people determine where they live and for how long. The bottleneck may be open if some cities choose more control and others choose less. We need variable options to see what works.

Next we might try to remove some other state controls that have created a frozen market, such as the density demands that are plaguing cities world wide and not creating any so far perceived improvements in the market. Once the controls are deregulated, one might start to see some improvement in some areas while others may lag behind. At least there will be more choices and more options and that alone should create a less stale market. – Mari Eliza