District 6 Supervisor Matt Dorseyand main election challenger Honey Mahogany touted their records on housing—and exchanged occasional barbs—at an Aug. 22 forum sponsored by SF YIMBY, the housing advocacy group.
As in previous debates, Dorsey and Mahogany were largely aligned on policy questions, with both enthusiastically supporting housing reforms. But with SF YIMBY’s endorsement meetings fast approaching, the candidates also dragged out policy skeletons in the hopes of sowing doubts about their opponent’s pro-housing bona fides…
Bummed to report that the [DCCC]@SFDemocrats
went with the anti-housing measure. Here is the unofficial vote count…(more) [DCCC]
See the list of DCCC Democrats who voted YES AHPA (anti-housing) as far as YIMBY is concerned. Has YIMBY logic gone too far into fantasy land for most Democrats? Note who votes yes on both. Ting, Mar, Haney. Guess they can’t get enough housing, or they may be confused? Haven’t read the bills? Anything that say housing is good?
The supporters of the ‘build-at-all-costs’ position ignore a half-century of history and the realities of the modern housing market
“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
–The Queen of Hearts, in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
San Francisco yimbys have now declared themselves “as progressive as it gets” in the welcoming pages of the San Francisco Chronicle. Claiming Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as one of their own, they are now, the article claims, engaged in “fighting inequality to protect the most vulnerable.”
Well, not really, actually, fighting but certainly “advancing progressive …policy goals.” The piece, by Bilal Mahmood, who ran for state Assembly in 2022 and lost, explains that in the future will protect the most vulnerable that remain.
What are these yimby “policy goals” and just how progressive are they?..(more)
The more you look under the covers the more obvious it becomes that the entire YIMBY plot traces its linage to the deepest darkest least transparent source of deceptive promulgation of untruths, baked into an insidious plot to spin a web of confusion around the facts. We have the documentation to prove it, but, who wants to see?
Mayor names an East Bay consultant who hasn’t been involved in local activism on land-use issues.
Mayor London Breed has nominated for a crucial Planning Commission seat an economic consultant who works in the East Bay and has, as far as I can tell, no record of engagement or activism on any local planning or land-use issue.
In fact, it’s surprising how little information is available about Derek Braun…
Braun, according to his resume and LinkedIn account and the resume he submitted to the Board of Supes, is a principal at Strategic Economics, a Berkeley outfit that does studies for local government. He has a master’s degree in planning from the University of Southern California…
On his resume, he lists two “affiliations:” The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition and SPUR. The coalition has more than 12,000 members, and he’s not on the board. SPUR also has a large membership, and he’s not on the board or any committees…
In fact, it’s very unusual for the mayor to nominate someone to such a powerful body who has no clear record in local politics, no way for the supes to judge what type of perspective he would bring to the panel…(more)
He doesn’t need to talk to the media or the supervisors because he meets all the requirements Breed needs by being affiliated with SF Bicycle Coalition and SPUR and his firm probably contracts with the city.
Late last month, as part of budget negotiations, Mayor London Breed agreed to spend $112 million on affordable housing, calling to use money from debt financing to pay for new housing projects and fund repairs to existing buildings.
It was part of a late-night budget deal that preserved most of the mayor’s priorities, but also added money originally requested by Supervisor Dean Preston as part of a “social housing” package, and in line with recommendations from the Housing Stability Fund Oversight Board. That board was formed to help figure out how to spend revenue coming from Proposition I, a real estate transfer tax that feeds into the city’s general fund.
So what does social housing actually mean? Let’s break it down.
What is social housing? Social housing, a type of public housing used in parts of Europe where government plays a larger role in providing social programs, aims to use private money to subsidize government-run housing where rents are capped for tenants based on their income level…It must be permanently affordable, and the average income across all tenants must not exceed 80% of the local median income…
How is it different from public housing? Public housing is state-run housing that caps housing costs to 30% of a resident’s income, and is only available to low-income renters who make less than 80% of the median income in the city. Social housing would institute a similar income-based rent cap but would not use income levels to restrict who can live there…
The major difference between the two concepts is where the subsidy for lower rents is coming from, Hyatt said. In public housing, it’s 100% from the government, while social housing would also use high-income rents or taxes to make up the rent gap for lower-income tenants.
San Francisco’s inability to agree on housing policy is nothing new. But with a state mandate looming, the city’s parochial squabbles over new housing development may do more than just frustrate pro-housing activists. They could also land the city in legal trouble.
That’s according to State Sen. Scott Wiener, who called the Board of Supervisors’ recent actions on housing policy “frustrating.” In June, the board passed a fourplex bill so laden with caveats that Mayor London Breed vetoed it on grounds that it could actually hurt, not help housing development. Last week, the board voted to send a charter amendment to the ballot that Wiener described as a “Trojan horse”—designed to confuse voters and sabotage another, more viable plan to build housing…(more)
If SF is sued by the state, we might consider joining the lawsuit against SB9 that eliminated single family housing, making home ownership more difficult and the state less family friendly.
Senator Wiener admits there is nothing illegal about the four-plex law. He claims SF is not doing what it needs to do to get things built. What does he expect them to do when selling entitlements is more profitable than building? Given the high cost of construction and financing, and the flight from cities, now is not a good time to invest in an overpriced city.
If our state representatives really want to house people they should figure out how to balance salaries with the cost of housing. Suing cities is a good way to anger the SF voters who are in a recall mood right now.
A conversation with Joel Kotkin, Wendell Cox, Judge Glock, and Jennifer Hernandez moderated by Manhattan Institute’s Brandon Fuller. The panel was sponsored by The Cicero Institute, The Breakthrough Institute, and Urban Reform Institute.
In a statement, Mandelman said he would continue to work with his colleagues on housing initiatives, including a new version of his fourplex legislation that may return later this year. But he “strongly rejected” the notion that the state should dictate the city’s zoning.
“Relying on State laws like SB 9 to solve our housing crisis is a complete abdication of our obligations as local leaders, and sends the sad message to San Franciscans that City Hall simply cannot come together to get things done for the people who sent us here,” he said…(more)
Rental prices are increasing by more than 30% in major cities across the U.S. with the national monthly average for a one-bedroom costing $1,701. NBC News’ Zinhle Essamuah reports on how private equity firms play a major role in fueling the rise in housing costs nationwide…(more)
The corporate buyout is old news to us, but, the national coverage makes it harder to hide the government’s role in creating the problem and avoiding any real fixes that might upset the corporate takeover of the housing market government claims to be fixing by building more housing. The game is complete when the financing comes from higher taxes.
Some 300 workers from the Tenderloin Housing Clinic are on strike today, demanding an increase in wages.
“No contract, no peace,” the crowd shouted outside the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Services offices along Turk Street this morning. After eight months of contract negotiations, many said they felt “pushed” to strike because of a lack of clarity around pay raises.
The Tenderloin Housing Clinic is a property management nonprofit that maintains around 2,000 affordable units throughout 24 projects in the city, mainly for formerly homeless tenants. That includes five in the Mission, including San Francisco’s largest SRO hotel, Mission Hotel. The nonprofit received over $33 million in city funding last fiscal year to provide housing for some of the city’s hardest-up denizens, and to provide services such as case management…(more)
Is it wise to encumber the Tenderloin Housing Clinic with more contracts to fill when they can’t manage their current staff? It is time to talk to the residents about the conditions in the supportive housing about how they are being supported to determine which of the many contractors is doing the best job. If service personnel are upset how well are they performing their jobs? We should ask the tenants they are charged with supporting. They know more than anyone else how well the supportive systems work.
SFGATE editor-at-large Andrew Chamings on why the Sho Club is wrong for San Francisco
San Francisco is getting its first NFT-based restaurant and private club. And it’s being built right in the middle of a public park.
A flurry of recent press releases from an entity named the Sho Group — a “global experiential hospitality platform” — revealed the details of the ostentatious Japanese-themed restaurant and private club, to be built on San Francisco’s most ostentatious public space, Salesforce Park…
The wording around the club’s recent media blitz reads like a parody of Silicon Valley’s repellent buzzwordery.
“SHO Club is a member’s only NFT-based hospitality club providing exclusive access to immersive experiences and services around its flagship restaurant, SHO,” reads the blurb.
What’s more galling than the repeated use of the terms “immersive” and “experiential” to describe an actual restaurant is the fact that, as the group’s website proudly proclaims, the astronomically expensive and exclusive eatery “is the only rooftop restaurant located on the Salesforce Transit Center’s roof.”…(more)
The PR guys are crazy to keep pitching these exclusive, expensive, reprehensively hideous projects in such as insensitive manner. The media is not sugar-coating it for them anymore. They are telling it like it is. We gag on vibrant, immersive experiential BS. Not to mention the activated sidewalks and other hyper techie speech that keep popping up in every pitch for parks that are not really parks because they lack grass and plants and trees. The are primarily poured concrete pathways. And for jolly’s they throw in some kooky tables and chairs and weed containers. The sad thing is that some people think this is good design. Pleasing to the eye. Who’s eye?
There is some idea of building a new condo on one of the piers, or in place of it that will have a bay front and inner bay pool. Clearly the architect and client are not considering low tide and just how bad that can smell. Low tide comes twice a day and the lower the lows the higher the highs.
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