GrowSF via email:

San Francisco real estate development is in a weird spot. While San Francisco has been tasked by the State with accommodating at least 82,000 new homes, the million bureaucratic barriers to building housing, slowing demand, and high construction costs are all combining into a perfect storm of total gridlock.

Just 8 new homes have been permitted each month in 2023, writes Marcus White in the Examiner. This is far below the 854 per month required to meet our growth goals.

If San Francisco government can’t repeal the laws blocking housing, we will forfeit local control of land use to the State in about five years. Better get building.

By Gennady Sheyner : Palo Alto Weekly – (via email)

State Sen. Josh Becker also took a position against SB 423, a housing bill that moved ahead Wednesday

With the state Senate hitting its deadline for passing bills this week, Sen. Josh Becker, D-Menlo Park, saw his legislation on renewable energy, carbon renewal, data privacy and prison canteen costs all clear the upper chamber over the past week.

But Becker’s support was conspicuously absent on the year’s most contentious housing bill of the current session, Senate Bill 423, which would extend and modify the 2017 law that created a streamlined approval process for housing development in communities that had failed to meet the state’s housing mandate.

Authored by state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, SB 423 is a successor to SB 35, also authored by Wiener. It extends the streamlining provisions until 2036, adds various new provisions pertaining to labor standards and removes exemptions for coastal areas. Palo Alto is among the cities that have formally opposed the bill, which cleared the Senate by a 29-5 vote. Becker, who abstained from voting, said in an interview he did not support the bill because it does not address the true barrier to building affordable housing: insufficient financing.

He noted that most of the cities in his district have met or exceeded their goals for total housing units in the last Regional Housing Needs Assessment cycle, which concluded last year, even as many fell well short when it comes to below-market-rate housing. The key to building more affordable housing is more investment of state funds, he said.

“Instead of removing local control over planning decisions, California needs to provide the financial support needed to ensure that critically needed affordable housing can be built,” Becker said in an interview. “ B 423 doesn’t help get us there.”…

By The Editorial Board : ocregister – excerpt

Last month, Gov. Gavin Newsom made an unusually substantive legislative push by unveiling a plan to help speed up infrastructure projects by, among other things, finally taking on the California Environmental Quality Act.

Business groups have responded favorably to the governor’s plan to streamline certain construction projects and speed up judicial reviews.

“For too long, special interest groups have weaponized CEQA to delay, scale back, or halt projects altogether for reasons unrelated to the environment,” said California Chamber of Commerce CEO Jennifer Barrera. “Streamlining CEQA for clean energy, water and transportation infrastructure, as well as more directly for the construction of new housing, can be achieved with environmental protections that help to restore the statute’s original intent.”

But lawmakers weren’t particularly moved to act on the governor’s proposals and environmentalist groups are pressuring lawmakers to halt any action on the proposals for now.

In a letter from a coalition of environmental groups critical of Newsom’s plan dated June 3, the governor is criticized for “short-circuiting the regular legislative process for new significant policy proposals” by trying to get his plan through by way of budget trailer bills.

Incidentally, these groups are right to note the abuse of the trailer bill process. From a simple good government perspective it has been troubling that the state has often preferred to use state budget trailer bills to ram through proposals that should go through the legislative process for public vetting… (more)

Letter to the Editor : marinij – excerpt

I am writing in regard to the recently published article about San Rafael’s downtown business planning (“City approves plan for economic development,” May 23). The elimination of parking meters should be on the list of steps to take.

Parking meters are a 1960s solution to bolster city revenues. The idea that people have to pay to park on city streets is out of date. No one has spare change and trying to navigate dozens of different card-enabled solutions in different locales is frustrating. In addition, the small amount of money collected is likely offset by the cost to enforce the meters and maintain the hardware.

Paying for the privilege to come downtown and see a movie, shop or have a meal puts the city core at a disadvantage compared to businesses outside of that area. Downtown San Rafael is a ghost town and bordering on blight. Getting rid of the meters is a step in the right direction for economic development.

Paid garages can stay as a paid service. Bonds were likely raised to build them and at least they offer some protection from the elements. But let’s keep the idea of the 1960s cars for our wonderful “classic car” shows, not paying to park.

— Edward Zimmerman, San Rafael

By State Senator Steve Glazer : calmatters – excerpt (includese audio track)

By Lynn La : calmatters – excerpt

Just in time to go home for Memorial Day weekend, legislators bulldozed their way through a bunch of bills at the end of this week to beat the even bigger deluge next week, when there’s a Friday deadline to pass remaining bills through the house where they were introduced.

Some of the bills that passed include:…

Fentanyl crisis: After a marathon 5-hour committee meeting on Wednesday about the fentanyl crisis, the Assembly on Thursday passed several fentanyl-related bills, including legislation that would create a fentanyl task force, prioritize cooperation between state and local law enforcement to crack down on trafficking, increase fines for dealers and expand Narcan accessibility…

Decriminalize psychedelics: Despite the California District Attorneys Association arguing that psychedelics have “no federally accepted medical use and have a high probability of misuse,” the Senate approved a bill to decriminalize certain hallucinogenic substances, which are known to be used by some veterans to treat PTSD, anxiety and depression…

Healthcare minimum wage: Healthcare workers who are advocating for a pay hike are supporting Sen. María Elena Durazo, a Democrat from Los Angeles, and her bill to boost their minimum hourly wage to $25, starting in January (the current minimum wage is $15.50). But the bill has been tweaked to increase pay to $21 an hour by June 2024 and to $25 by June 2025…

Dems Clap Back at Newsom on CEQA

Despite Gov. Newsom’s urging to pass his series of reforms on the California Environmental Quality Act in Richmond on Thursday, just hours later a key Senate budget committee said “no,” report CalMatters’ Marisa Kendall and Julie Cart.

Related Story: Is CA’s New Way of Taking Out the Trash a Failure?…

Newsom’s bills could return as budget trailer bills, however, or he could re-introduce them through policy committees, though that process takes much longer…(more)

By Jonathan Lansner : eastbaytimes – excerpt

Most of those calculations have very little analysis behind them, says John Burns.

John Burns’ real estate research shop has become one of the housing industry’s top analytical firms by taking a more holistic view of what drives homebuying.

For two-plus decades, his eponymous Orange County-based company has become a critical cog in homebuilding thinking because its research looks far beyond real estate basics to encompass broader economic and demographic changes – not to mention the fleeting desire of house hunters.

So the company has now shed “real estate” from its corporate monicker, morphing into John Burns Research and Consulting from John Burns Real Estate Consulting.

Let me give you a noteworthy example from the novel Burns thinking: The company’s analysis suggests the nation is only 1.7 million homes short of what’s needed – a fraction of other housing shortage estimates…(more)

by Kevin Truong : sfstandard – excerpt

In a Palace Hotel ballroom packed with hundreds of investors, engineers and business leaders, San Francisco Mayor London Breed made a confident proclamation: The city is the “the AI capital of the world,” she said.

Breed closed out the one-day AI Forward conference, touting the city’s roster of deep-pocketed investors and local universities that make it fertile ground for artificial intelligence. Organized by Goldman Sachs and SV Angel, the conference featured Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and OpenAI President Greg Brockman, among others.

In her remarks, Breed pitched the city as the epicenter of cutting-edge tech along with some big ideas, such as a partial redevelopment of the Westfield San Francisco Centre, the Downtown mall Nordstrom recently announced its departure from, or putting a soccer field and open space right in the middle of the Moscone Center.

“Our goal is to make it as easy as possible for you to focus on creating this incredible, innovative thing that’s going on that everybody is talking about,” Breed told the crowd…(more)

Is anyone else tired of being the capital of the world yet? Does anyone believe that San Franciscos is the AI capital of the world? Do we want to be the AI victim of every experiment that business can dream up? Nobody trusts this new technology but our mayor has decided to make us test subjects for a systme that no one knows anything about.

Problems are most obvious with the autocabs, but, for all we know nextbus and school payroll problems stem from experimental AI systems that are beyond human capacity to fix because the codes are not written by humans.

I can’t wait to see what the AI consultant is going to spit out as a remedy for the downtown “doom loop”. I’m sure the Mayor will gush all over it regardless of what it is. Anybody who describes our city’s future as “an incredible, innovative thing” does not have my vote of confidence. That elevator pitch is too vague for me.