All posts by discowk7

Politics

Grassroots Democrats denounce PAC that helped get Haney elected to Assembly

By Tim Redmond :48hills – excerpt

Govern for California is anti-labor, anti-teacher, anti-single-payer, and pro-Matt Haney. Now county committees around the state are telling Democrats not to take the money.
Several county chapters of the California Democratic Party have passed or are considering resolutions condemning the anti-labor plutocratic group Govern for California and calling on Democratic candidates to refuse to accept the group’s money.

The SF County Central Committee approved that resolution Sept. 28, with Sen. Scott Wiener and Assemblymember Phil Ting the only ones voting no…

The resolution has no binding authority, but it’s part of a growing movement among grassroots Democrats to distance the party from a powerful group of very rich donors who are under investigation for dubious campaign spending and openly seeking to end tenure for teachers, end organized labor in government, and block single-payer health care.

Haney insisted he supported single-payer, but he took $285,000 in direct contributions from Govern for California affiliates. Check out this video where David Crane, the co-founder of the group, explains how he helped kill single-payer:..(more)

Sounds like a lobbying organization if they are working on that many subjects. David Crane must be a lobbyist if he killed the California single payer bill.

Housing

SF’s Downtown Condos Are Piling Up And Pricing Down As Housing Market Cools

By Kevin Truong : sfstandard – excerpt

High-rise condos near San Francisco’s downtown—which account for the bulk of San Francisco’s newer housing stock—are piling up amid rising interest rates and a shift in the city’s housing market.

The luxury condos are another casualty of San Francisco’s slow return to offices, with a once-thriving social and retail scene in SoMa and Mission Bay now gasping for air. Home buyers are looking to other neighborhoods for less cookie-cutter units, more outdoor space and—frankly—more life… (more)

deregulated housing bills, Housing

Marc Benioff Calls To ‘Restructure’ SF Downtown, Adding More Housing

By Kevin Truong : sfstandard – excerpt

The walk up to the Moscone Center on Day 1 of Dreamforce had a sentimental air, with winding registration lines of techies in Allbirds or t-shirts advertising their favorite enterprise software under Patagonia vests…

The 20th iteration of Dreamforce tried to create a feeling of a return, underscored by the keynote presentation theme of “The Great Reunion” delivered by Salesforce co-CEOs Marc Benioff and Bret Taylor. As usual, Benioff played a starring role in the day’s events and used the stage to tout his commitments to the city and its recovery.

“This needs to go well so we attract more business back to San Francisco. This will be a key way of reopening downtown, reopening these areas and giving everybody a big boost,” Benioff said in an interview. “We invested a lot in Moscone, and this is the first time Moscone’s really being used. Everything is open for the first time so let’s see if this can be a great convention city.”…

Benioff said that as he traveled the country and observed the economic recovery in major business centers, San Francisco’s downtown stood out for its overwhelming reliance on office space…

“If you go to a city like Philadelphia it looks like it’s a lot more open. Why is that? Because you have office, residential, university, arts, all these things mixed in the downtown,” Benioff said, calling for “a lot more housing” in San Francisco’s downtown. “You have to rebalance, restructure, refill your downtown if you want it to feel alive.”…

And return-to-office mandates are not on the horizon: Benioff said recently at an event in New York City that “office mandates are never going to work” …(more)

RELATED

Benioff Speaks  about a number of subjects during Dreamforce week.

Being as he is one of the only tech titans standing who holds much sway in San Francisco since the out of office exit turned the downtown into a deserted nightmare of streets and sidewalks with a threat on every corner, he is one of the few people who may be able to knock some sense into City Hall. We will share a few pearls of wisdom that he handed out from a number of media sources.

““There’s no finish line when it comes to security and social engineering,” He was commenting on Uber hack and the social engineering is puzzling but, perhaps it lack context.

“Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff on quiet quitting: Do what makes you happy”

Benioff Says San Francisco homelessness is improving as City’s performance scorecard shows 3.5% decline. He backed Prop C to fund homeless projects by taxing gross receipts on corporate revenue above $50 million.

The market ‘doesn’t fully appreciate how committed we are to growth and margins’, which means acquisitions of other tech companies are on the horizon.

Marc is inspired by Patagonia founder’s giving away his company. will he do something similar?

 

 

Housing

Another Housing Denial: Concerns Over Apartment Size Kill 57 Units on Parking Lot

By Sarah Wright : sfstandard – excerpt

San Francisco is back at it with housing denials, this time killing 57 units planned for a 15-spot parking lot in the city’s South of Market district.

A conditional use authorization for the 1010 Mission St. project was denied at the Planning Commission last week in response to concerns from local community groups, who argued that the units were too small and that too few of them, at 13, would be considered “affordable” with even fewer set aside for the lowest-income people in the city…

“I believe the opposition of this project is really representative to what seems to be a trend of market-rate micro-unit housing being proposed in dense neighborhoods like SOMA,” said Commissioner Gabriella Ruiz, who voted against the project’s zoning approval.

PJ Eugenio, an employment counselor from the South of Market Community Action Network, was one in a deluge of speakers who attended Thursday’s meeting to oppose the project. He and others argued that SOMA already has too many single-room occupancy units that aren’t affordable, saying it’s “out of touch with the community.”…(more)

No one can claim the opposition is fighting housing when there is proof that a lot of the tiny units are empty because no one wants to live in them. Even homeless people and lower income people have standards and the new closets do not meet their needs. It is time to tackle the affordability problem and handing out entitlements does not solve that problem or satisfy the RHNA quotas. We just learned the thousands of entitled unbuilt properties in the pipeline do not count. Neither do the thousands of empty unfilled units. Once people see the goals behind the RHNA numbers are unobtainable, there is widespread interest in joining the fight against them. Find out more about the RHNA wars September 21, 2022, 6:30PM on the Zoom Town Hall: https://catalystsca.org/ where some city leaders will explain why they are joining the lawsuit.

Politics

Nearly Half of San Franciscans Have Been Victims of Theft, New Poll Says

By Garrett Leahy : sfstandard – excerpt

Nearly half of San Franciscans have been a victim of theft in the past five years and a quarter have been threatened or physically attacked, according to a new poll.

Findings from the SF Chronicle survey underscored the challenges of the city and the unhappiness of its residents, with 65% saying life in SF is worse today than when they moved here.

The survey also found that 39% of residents have had their property damaged in the past five years…(more)

Housing

New law represents ‘seismic shift’ in California housing policy

By Benjamin Schneider : sfexaminer – excerpt

A new state law would allow developers to convert strip malls and office parks into apartment buildings — in a policy change that could produce far more housing than last year’s high-profile effort to end single-family zoning in California.

AB 2011, authored by Buffy Wicks, an East Bay Assembly member, and passed by the Legislature last week, rezones commercial areas on major boulevards for three-to-six story residential development. And it permits those buildings “by right,” meaning they will not be subject to discretionary reviews from neighbors or lawsuits under the California Environmental Quality Act. All told, the bill could enable the construction of more than 2 million new homes… (more)

Uncategorized

The state’s local housing goals are nothing more than a farce

By Tim Redmond : 48hills – excerpt

Why is everyone so set on meeting “RHNA” standards when the evidence is very clear that it will never happen?

In March, the Office of the State Auditor released a report on the implementation of the Regional Housing Needs Assessment, the massive planning process that seeks to add 2.5 million housing units to the state over the next eight years.

Most of the major news media in the state ignored the audit, which was pretty scathing: It said, in essence that the Department of Housing and Community Development, which oversees RHNA, bungled the numbers, used projections that aren’t reliable, and left cities and counties hanging without accurate goals and timetables.

People who are typically on opposite sides of the housing debate cheered: Yimby law said that audit should that HCD’s projections were too low. The California Association of Local Electeds said the audit proved projections were too high.

Missing from much of the debate and discussion is a problem that a few critics have raised from the start: The RHNA goals are so far-fetched that cities and counties can’t possible meet them—and that’s not entirely, or even primarily, the fault of local government… (more)

How many times do we have to say it? Cities don’t build housing. For a deep div into Bill Barns tapes go to the Catalyst site where you may download it copies of all their Town Halls and register for more. catalystsca.org/

Given the lack of honesty and truth about the reasons for the loss of affordable housing, our Sacramento politicians are trying to shift the blame for their failures to “fix” the homeless problem to local governments. How likely is this to work when we have rolling blackouts and water shortages, epic wildfire, and have become a global joke?

Housing

Hands Off the Houses: Can We Stop Speculative Land Grabs?

By Corey McDonald : shelterforce – excerpt (includes audio track)

What began in earnest during the 2008 financial crisis has been exacerbated by COVID-19: large companies, often backed by powerful private equity firms, swept into the single- and multi-family housing market hoping for a big return on their investment. More than a decade later, they’re not only reaping the rewards — they’re increasing their market share.

“They just bought in bulk,” says Oscar Valdés Viera, a research manager at Americans for Financial Reform. “As people were losing their homes, they were taking advantage of that, and they’re doing that again — they’ve expanded during the pandemic.”…

Two laws specifically address auction sales of distressed properties, or properties that are risk of or have gone through foreclosure. California Senate Bill 1079, which was signed into law in September 2020, modifies the foreclosure auction process to give owner-occupants, tenants, local governments, and housing nonprofits the first right to purchase after a foreclosure sale.

Another bill, the foreclosure intervention housing preservation program, or FIHPP, provides funding in the form of loans or grants for nonprofits, community land trusts, and other eligible buyers to purchase properties available through SB 1079, as well as properties that are delinquent on their mortgage and have gone through a short sale…

The FIHPP process is still being worked out by California’s Department of Housing and Community Development…(more)

I might be nice to have someone less developer-friendly representing us in Washington to take advantage of federal opportunities to protect homeowners and potential purchasers. Who might that be?

Uncategorized

Redondo Beach Mega-Project; San Diego Co. Rural Emissions; Housing Bills Advance; and More

By Mckenzie Locke, CP&DR News Briefs : : cp-dr – excerpt

Three Key Housing Bills to Reach Newsom’s Desk
Three bills considered game-changers by housing advocates have been approved by both houses of the legislature and are headed to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk. Lawmakers reached an agreement with labor leaders on AB 2011 and SB 6, two housing bills that would make commercial real estate available for residential construction…Meanwhile, AB 2097, which effectively eliminates parking requirements within a half-mile of major transit stops, also passed the senate…

HCD Calls for Review of San Francisco’s Downsizing of Proposed Residential Project
The Department of Housing and Community Development has, for a second time, notified San Francisco that it may have violated state housing law for a medium-density project. In the newest case, a proposed six-story project in the Mission District, state housing officials wrote to voice their concern about the city’s decision to downsize an affordable housing project. The Planning Commission and the developer agreed to reduce the height of the project by about 10 feet, down to five stories. The height reduction would not change the number of available units, but the state argues that limiting height is a conflict in the fight to increase density. The state wrote that, under the state density bonus law, the city cannot downzone projects that contain enough affordable housing to be eligible for density increases. Officials are requesting that the city communicate its justification…(more)

This is where we are expected to let go of all reason and walk through the looking glass. What is the purpose of increasing height in a building if not to satisfy the need for more units? What is the point in forcing extra stories on a building at considerable costs to the owner and discomfort to the neighbors, if the architects have been able to design the designated number of units without an additional story?

What is the purpose of up-zoning and density if not to build housing units? Adding floors is not the only way to add density. One may eliminate other uses and or use of the many options to reduce open space to extend the footprint of the building and reduce the building height. This project sounds with a reasonable solution was reached that all parties agreed to. The owner probably wanted to reduce the cost of the projects and may realize a greater profit due to those reduced cost. Reducing cost during an inflationary period makes sense and may have been the deciding factor.

What is HCD trying to do? Force the developer to spend more money?

Uncategorized

San Francisco Ambulance Stolen in ‘Stake From a Tree’ Attack. Taken For Joy Ride Around Best Buy Par king Lot

By Joe Burn : sfstandard – excerpt

San Francisco Fire Department paramedics were left shaken after their ambulance was stolen by a man wielding a “stake from a tree” Monday morning, officials said.

The pair of Local 798 paramedics escaped unharmed after the incident at 6:50 a.m., which saw a male suspect break the windows of the ambulance at the 1700 block of Harrison Street, according to the police and fire departments…

The Mid-Market-based fire department union has now demanded that District Attorney Brooke Jenkins and Mayor London Breed take action…(more)