By Gennady Sheyner : paloaltoonline – excerpt (includes video)

Mayor suggests ambitious targets make it impossible for cities to achieve affordable-housing goals

Palo Alto Mayor Lydia Kou took a swing on Wednesday at state housing mandates during her “State of the City” address and warned that recent laws could render the council helpless to prevent an onrush of large developments.

Speaking in front of about 100 residents at the Palo Alto Art Center, Kou sharply criticized recent state laws like Senate Bill 35, which created a streamlined approval process for residential projects in cities that fail to meet their housing quotas, and Senate Bill 330, which limits a council’s ability to revise design standards while reviewing a project and limits the length of the approval process. While state lawmakers are hoping these laws will address California’s housing shortage, Kou characterized the recent legislation as a “‘Build, baby, build” machine that will do little to lower the cost of housing.

Kou’s comments came at a time when Palo Alto is awaiting the state Department of Housing and Community Development’s feedback on and approval of its new Housing Element, a document that lays out the city’s plans to allocate sites for the state-mandated 6,086 new housing units between 2023 and 2031. The city submitted its draft Housing Element to the state agency last December and is expecting a response this week…(more)

By Kyung Lah : msn – excerpt

Allene Jue used to vote in a simple, rapid manner – scan the names on the ballot and pick the Asian sounding names.

That was before 2020.

“Something turned on during the pandemic and lit a fire,” said Jue, a Chinese American mother of two girls, ages 3 and 5, living on the west side of San Francisco. Throughout the pandemic, Jue watched as violent hate crimes against Asian Americans brought fear to the community with not enough response from local law enforcement or prosecutors. As the school closures wore on and on in California, Jue saw her local school board discuss progressive policy issues like renaming schools ahead of focusing on simply returning students to the classroom…

Jue, who generally considers herself a Democrat, recalled her anger at liberal local politicians.

“They care about policies that don’t really help someone who just lives in the city and just want to be safe, who wants their kids to be educated well,” she said. “They forgot the core problems for regular people. I wanted to do something to try to change and take that power back. It was fear and frustration, a lot of frustration, that I turned into action.”…

Progressive backlash

Supervisor Joel Engardio, a gay married man who by most national standards is a liberal, describes himself as a moderate in San Francisco. And he is quick to criticize the word “progressive.”…

Erosion among Asian and Latino voters, said Kanishka Cheng of grassroots community building organization Together SF, is explained by Democrats forgetting the core values for immigrant communities…(more)

Op-Ed submitted by John Mirisch, Beverly Hills City Council Member : propublica – excerpt

California State Senator Scott Wiener, representing the real estate industry and developers, once declared: “California isn’t Texas.”

And yet it seems, consarnit, at least in one respect, Wiener’s Yimby (more appropriately labelled Wimby) gang wants the Golden State to be more like the Lone Star State.

In its anti-choice zeal, the lawmakers of Texas looked to private citizens to enforce the state’s stringent anti-abortion statutes. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote about the law that in effect, Texas lawmakers have deputized the state’s citizens as bounty hunters, offering them cash prizes for civilly prosecuting their neighbors’ medical procedures.”

Instead of rejecting the principle of legal vigilantism outright, California quickly followed suit, adopting the Texas bounty strategy to enforce anti-gun laws within the state. In addition to letting self-deputizing posses sue to enforce gun laws, the state also passed legislation that allows third-parties to sue cities to allow developers to build whatever the heck they want, which naturally would be based on what’s good for their own bottom-lines rather than for the communities in which they build. (Unsurprisingly, the groups attacking and suing cities are almost all AstroTurf groups funded by the real estate industry).

Evidently not wanting to leave all the old-Western and militaristic jargon to Texas, the state’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, came up with a term more suited to Navy Seal commandos than the Old West, and has even created his own housing strike force to eliminate any local community decision-making of the kind that developers feel stands in the way of their own ability to make profits.

All this talk of bounties, and strike forces, and John Wayne seems to have inspired CAYimby, one of the state’s leading AstroTurf Wimby groups; it looks like they’re trying to keep up with their alt-right-adjacent collaborators from Montana’s Frontier Institute in pursuing the “spirit of the West” (after all, California is west of Montana). California is also west of Texas, and following the Texas model, CAYimby’s director of “research,” the Wimbys’ own good ole boy, M. Nolan Gray, announced his organization’s institution of a bounty program, with rewards of up to $5,000 to engage in “research” for CAYimby…(more)

By Vanessa Rancaño : kqed – excerpt

During the pandemic, Alameda County supervisors approved some of the strongest protections in California for tenants facing evictions. But last month, the board abruptly changed course — rejecting a slate of proposals designed to keep renters in their homes.

The turn comes amid backlash from property owners that could signal future resistance statewide, some tenant and landlord advocates say.

‘What it feels like is really a turning back of a lot of work and conversations, a lot of hope and trust.’Leo Esclamado, organizer, My Eden Voice

“What it feels like is really a turning back of a lot of work and conversations, a lot of hope and trust,” said Leo Esclamado, an organizer with the community group My Eden Voice, which lobbied hard to extend renter protections in the county.

The measures would have banned landlords from doing criminal background checks on potential tenants, created a rental registry meant to help the county enforce code violations and rent-control laws, and only allowed “just cause” evictions for things like not paying rent or violating lease terms.

The supervisors also voted to cut off funding for the county’s Housing Secure program, which has provided legal services to both tenants and homeowners since 2018…

For Chris Moore, who owns property in Oakland and unincorporated parts of Alameda County, and who sits on the board of the East Bay Rental Housing Association, the Board of Supervisors’ shift on the issue is a refreshing change.

Board President Nate Miley argues that supervisors helped create the conditions for a backlash by refusing to ease the eviction ban months ago.

Centro Legal de la Raza Executive Director Monique Berlanga said she was particularly surprised by the supervisors’ decision to defund the tenant and homeowner legal services program.

There are now 27 attorneys in the county who provide free eviction defense and other housing-centered legal services to tenants and homeowners in under-resourced communities, up from just six in 2017, before the Housing Secure program was funded, according to Centro Legal de la Raza, which administers it. Since the program’s inception, the program has served nearly 3,000 residents…(more)

RELATED:

As Bay Area Eviction Moratoriums Expire, Local Lawmakers Scramble

George Wu is willing to die to end Alameda County’s eviction ban.

The San Leandro property owner launched a hunger strike Sunday to protest the moratorium, which he blames for $120,000 and counting in unpaid rent. Wu plans to camp out in front of the county administration building day and night, through cold and rain, until lawmakers lift the ban…(more)

By Emily Hoeven :sfchronicle – excerpt

Sausalito, desperate to avoid the “builder’s remedy,” proposed constructing housing underwater. Its housing element is the subject of a YIMBY lawsuit…(more)

RELATED:

YIMBY Law Set to Sue Sausalito Over Allegedly Out-of-Compliance Housing Element
By Joe Kukura : sfist – excerpt

The YIMBY crowd is unleashing their lawsuits on cities whose Housing Elements are not yet approved by the state, and in the case of an impending Marin County lawsuit, claiming that some proposed housing sites are literally “in the water.”

Here in San Francisco, the year-plus drama over passing the state-mandated Housing Element — a long-range planning document related to housing — was finally resolved in late January with a successfully approved plan that the state OK’ed at the deadline’s 11th hour. That state required that SF submit a plan to build 82,000 new housing units by the year 2031, and had we not gotten the plan approved in time, we’d have been subject to potentially losing billions in state funding, a range of other legal and financial consequences, plus the much-discussed “builder’s remedy” that would have allowed developers to just build whatever they pleased without regard for zoning or city approvals…

this lawsuit story seems to be fed to the Chronicle as an exclusive, with knowledge its claims would generate supportive, uncritical coverage for the plaintiffs. The article’s author has been retweeting YIMBY tweets all day since the piece was published.

There may be some credible claims in this still-unfiled lawsuit. It quotes one resident as saying their property was included as a potential development site “without any contact with me, and without any notice period or hearing.” But the claim that some sites are “mostly underwater” deserves a little scrutiny.…(more)

This sounds like a joke, and it may be one. How can a city built on a steep hill with little undeveloped buildable land expect to build a lot of anything without tearing out and replacing a lot of what is alraedy built? Given the famous houseboat community, buildng underwater is not too far-fetched. Perhaps one solution is to dredge the bay enough to bring in a large decommissioned ship to fullfill the housing goals.

By Jackson Stromberg : marinij – excerpt

Let’s indulge in a fantasy. Imagine the California legislators and bureaucrats working on housing could see eight years into the future, when the next set of housing element plans are due. Maybe they can see 16 years into the future for the deadline after that.

If they could envision what will happen, these leaders could take responsibility and act accordingly.

Instead, we must face reality: A political steamroller is coming from Sacramento to deny local input on housing with the theory that any kind of housing is always good. And those driving that steamroller will tell you they know best.

The system has been created to build and build some more. In this reality, everyone profits – contractors, plumbers, carpenters, developers, mega investors, money managers, refrigerator salesmen and so on….(more)

The Sacramento Bulldozer is rolling over the American dream of homeownership. They are replacing personal equity and family securtiy for the middle-class with corporate faceless unapproachable landlords.

By Andrew Chamings : sfgate – excerpt

The long-planned express lane on a 22-mile stretch of Highway 101 on the San Francisco Peninsula is now open for business. Tasked with reducing traffic on one of the gnarliest commute stretches in the Bay Area, the lane rewards carpoolers — but comes at a cost to others.

Here’s a breakdown of how the new 101 express lanes work: They’re now open between I-380 in South San Francisco and Whipple Avenue in Redwood City. Use of the lane is free for vehicles with three or more people, two-seat cars with two people, buses and motorcycles. For the rest, the pricing gets a little more complicated.

The cost to enter the express lane is constantly changing, depending on traffic. That one-time charge — anywhere from 50 cents to $12 — will be displayed on electronic signage above the lane. Motorists traveling solo with a FasTrak tag can choose to take that price and enter the lane. The charge will be applied to their bill…(more)

by Shira Stein :sfchronicle – via email

State Sen. Scott Wiener has formed an exploratory committee to run for the congressional seat currently occupied by Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi.

Wiener, D-San Francisco, is raising funds to run for Pelosi’s House seat in the event she doesn’t run for another term in 2024. Pelosi stepped down as leader of House Democrats in January and has held the San Francisco House seat since 1987.

Pelosi “is one of the most effective and transformational leaders we’ve ever had. I am and will continue to be grateful to have her as my representative in Congress for as long as she is willing to serve. I’m exploring my options for a potential congressional run in the event she decides to step down,” Wiener said in a statement through a spokesperson.

Forming an exploratory committee is the first step toward running for Congress, but is largely a placeholder that allows a candidate to raise funds, poll likely voters and conduct other acts to determine whether a candidate should run.

As a senator, Wiener has championed numerous bills aimed at dramatically boosting California’s housing production, as well as bills focused on civil liberties and the LGBTQ community.

So far this legislative session, he has proposed a bill to make permanent an earlier requirement he passed requiring local governments to streamline approval of some projects if the city hasn’t met its state-mandated housing targets. That measure has sped up the approval of more than 3,000 housing units in San Francisco alone. He’s also revived a push to decriminalize hallucinogenic mushrooms, and is co-author of a proposal to remove Prop. 8 — a voter-approved initiative to ban gay marriage that was ruled unconstitutional — from the state Constitution.

“Speaker Emerita Pelosi plans to serve her entire term in Congress, representing the people of San Francisco. And in order to help win back the House for the Democrats, she has filed for re-election,” her spokesperson, Aaron Bennett, told The Chronicle on Friday.

Pelosi’s daughter Christine Pelosi, an attorney who has never held public office but has been a leader in the state and national Democratic parties, and former San Francisco Supervisor Jane Kim, now the California director of the Working Families Party, are also expected to consider making a run when Pelosi does retire.

Reach Shira Stein: shira.stein; Twitter: @shiramstein

By Mike Ege : sfstandard – excerpt

Assemblymember Matt Haney has weighed in on San Francisco’s Downtown recovery with new legislation to expedite projects that convert office space to housing.

The Office to Housing Conversion Act promises to make approval for conversion projects—which tend to be very complicated and expensive—automatic. It would also block municipalities from adding on additional fees and requirements.

The bill is based in part on the Downtown Calgary Development Incentive Program, which offers qualifying projects in Calgary, Alberta, a dollar amount per-square-foot grant provided they meet certain criteria. According to a Calgary Herald article, that city has converted over a million square feet of office space and is considering expanding uses for empty office buildings to hotels and schools…

The bill would also set up a special fund that could provide grants for most office-to-housing conversions; San Francisco has been exploring similar incentive plans. Haney’s bill would also mandate 10% of any housing units in qualifying projects to be set aside for low- or moderate-income households.

At least one local architect has identified a cohort of office buildings—pre-1950 buildings less than nine stories tall—as relatively accessible candidates for conversion…(more)