therealdeal – excerpt

OK from city would still leave questions on whether 495-unit development will ever rise

A flashpoint in San Francisco’s ongoing YIMBY vs NIMBY wars is likely to be approved next week, a step forward following a controversial 2021 decision by the Board of Supervisors sent the 495-unit apartment project back for additional environmental review.

It nevertheless looks unlikely that the 27-story apartment development, with about 24% affordable housing, will be built anytime soon. In addition to the high construction costs and lack of capital partners plaguing developers across the city, project developer Build Inc., recently turned over another entitled downtown property for 460 units to its creditors…

And some close observers think the tower will never rise. The project’s main opponent, politically powerful affordable housing advocate TODCO, told the San Francisco Chronicle in October that it would stop its fight against the development precisely because it doesn’t believe the apartment tower will be built.

“It would be a waste of time to oppose it—it would be opposing something that doesn’t exist, that never will exist,” TODCO Executive Director John Elberling told the paper when Build refiled plans for the project last fall. “It could never get the rents that would be needed for that project to be financially feasible even before interest rates and construction costs went up.” …(more)

A number of SF projects are being dropped or turned over to creditors. Who will fund the next round of YIMBY politicians if the developers are broke? Might this be a good time for some new blood to step up.

By Thomas D. Elias : .californiafocus – excerpt

Immediately after state legislators passed the landmark SB 9 and 10 in 2021, taking most local land-use decisions away from city councils and county supervisors, resentful local officials vowed to run a referendum campaign and kill those new laws.

The two measures essentially eliminated R-1 single family zoning everywhere in California, allowing up to six housing units on lots formerly limited to one and making approval automatic for high rise residential buildings on all streets reasonably close to mass transit.

That meant easy permitting, for example, for buildings up to five stories on any street where officials suddenly open a new bus line. It was not limited to areas in walking distance of rail or subway stops.

But the referendum mounted by dozens of local officials never got off the ground that year, partly because the coronavirus pandemic drove the cost of gathering initiative petition signatures to unprecedented heights – as much as $16 per signature in some parts

So the promised anti-density referendum never made the 2022 state ballot and the landmark laws remain on the books. Neither has produced much action as yet, in large part because no one has demonstrated that the authorized new housing would be profitable. There’s also a shortage of construction workers.

By contrast, a previous law allowing “ADUs” – additional dwelling units often called “granny flats” – on virtually all onetime R-1 properties has produced major results. It is hard to find a significant home remodel or rebuild in this state that does not include one. Some cities are making ADUs major policy instruments in efforts to satisfy state housing density requirements.

No one knows whether most of these are occupied by renters or family members of the property owners. But some longtime property owners are downsizing into new ADUs, allowing their adult children and families to move into their properties’ main houses.

Into this picture now step some of the same folks who vowed in 2021 that they’d repeal SB 9 and 10.

They hope to circulate petitions for a new initiative aimed not only at those two laws, but the other housing density requirements now being imposed around California via a spate of new laws passed by pro-density legislators led by Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener of San Francisco, who has spearheaded this movement for most of the last decade. Wiener claims only massive new construction can solve the state’s housing shortage, variously estimated at anywhere from 1 million to 3.5 million dwelling units by state authorities over the last five years.

That, of course, ignored the vast store of vacated office buildings, mini-malls and big box stores created by the pandemic. It’s much cheaper and faster to convert them to housing than building new units while fighting off lawsuits and ever-inflating costs for materials, land and labor. Held up by labor unions and legislators until recently, conversions are now taking off.

The putative new initiative would likely not interfere with those changes, because they cause little variation in building footprints and won’t alter neighborhoods.

But it could stymie more attempts by the state to take over land use decisions long the purview of local governments and local ballot measures.

“We’d like to fix the ambiguities some people saw in our previous proposed initiative” said Anita Enander, a city councilwoman and former mayor of Los Altos Hills, near San Jose. “Our new effort should be more generally supportable. It would simply say that when state law and local land use laws conflict, the local ones will prevail. A lot of people don’t want extreme dense housing. They just want to live in their own homes.”

Added Dennis Richards, a former longtime member of the San Francisco planning commission, “Taking this field away from local government is a way of wiping out democracy. People like Wiener are saying it does not matter what local residents think about their own cities, or how they’ve voted.”

Historically, local control has usually won out over centralized planning when Californians have voted on it.  Sponsors of the hoped-for measure say polling indicates 60 percent to 65 percent approval.

Even if it’s not actually that high, don’t bet against this effort once it gets going…(more)

By Suzanne Phan : abc7news – excerpt

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — We’re learning more about plans for a 50-story skyscraper in San Francisco’s Outer Sunset neighborhood.

The proposal calls for 712 new apartments, 15,000 square feet of retail space, 113 affordable units, bike parking, and a car basement. If approved, it would replace an existing garden center and parking lot…

Our media partner the SF Standard reports that the neighborhood is likely to push back against this plan.

That’s because 1,500 people signed a petition to stop a previous plan for a 12-story building at the same location…

“It’s a distraction from the housing work that we’re doing. I don’t think they’re relying on any housing law that I’ve authored as a legislator. I think they are relying on the state-density bonus law which has been around for 40 years,” said Sen. Scott Wiener…(more)

By David Garrick : sandiegouniontribune – excerpt

The litigation argues that the city failed to analyze the new policy’s potential environmental impacts, and that the rule update will encourage sprawl and damage neighborhoods.

SAN DIEGO —

Local groups that advocate for single-family homeowners are suing San Diego in an effort to block a new city effort to jump-start production of high-rise housing and backyard apartments.

A lawsuit filed Friday by the groups seeks to overturn a 5-4 City Council vote in February to soften rules allowing taller apartment buildings and more backyard units when a property is near mass transit.

Developers of dense projects have been required to find sites within half a mile of mass transit, but the new rules double that distance to one mile — making thousands more acres eligible for projects that critics argue may change neighborhood character…

The two groups that filed the suit, Livable San Diego and Neighbors for a Better San Diego, contend the city policy will encourage dense projects too far away from transit for most residents to be willing to use it…(more)

By Alan Mallach : shelterforce – excerpt

Some say yes. But simply making it easier to build will not reach those who are unhoused.

It takes some serious chutzpah to assert that the answer to homelessness is obvious, as a piece published earlier in this year in The Atlantic does. If only “The Obvious Answer to Homelessness” actually had offered the answer, obvious or otherwise. Sadly, it didn’t. And even more sadly, it perpetuated a narrow and misleading—and ideologically charged—view of the homelessness crisis. The more this view is propagated, the more it gets in the way of thinking clearly about a problem that should be solvable, but is far from simple.

The article, authored by journalist Jerusalem Demsas, does get a couple of things right. Yes, the homelessness problem is much worse in the “superstar cities” like Seattle, San Francisco, or Washington, D.C. And no, people do not go to these cities to become homeless, or because of their mild climate or liberal politics. But to conclude that the answer is (drumroll, please) to get rid of burdensome regulations so that developers can build more housing in those superstar cities, is to seriously misinterpret a number of facts on the ground. In fact, eliminating regulations would hardly make a dent in the problem. Regulation is a red herring that directs attention away from finding real solutions.

I’m not saying we don’t need more housing supply. Yes, we do. Since the Great Recession, we have under-produced housing relative to the growth in the number of households and the need to replace old units. In the last couple of years, the number of new households being formed and looking for a place to live has spiked, and housing production has not kept up. This is one of a host of reasons why prices and rents have skyrocketed in the last two or three years. There is little doubt that if we built more housing, particularly plain vanilla housing like the small single-family homes and modest garden apartments that relieved the post-World War II housing crisis, we would make a big dent in the needs of the millions of young people, middle-income families, and others for decent, affordable housing. I have been saying this since long before the idea became the solution du jour. But there are some big catches…(more)

by Kevin Truong : sfstandard – excerpt

Bonita Cohn moved into her three-bedroom Nob Hill flat in 1982, and it remained her residence for the next 40 years, through marriage, divorce and her long career as a local artist specializing in clay pots and stoneware.

Over her time living in the apartment at 1538 Jones St., 76-year-old Cohn estimates that she had more than 70 boarders and housemates who lived in the space over the years.

But last October, she said she was forced to leave her longtime home because of a problem tenant named Loyd Hernandez, who drove her and other roommates out through what they described as a sustained pattern of intimidation and harassment, all while refusing to pay rent for more than a year.

“I never had a problem before meeting Loyd,” she said from her sister’s home in Long Island, where she lives today. “He was supposed to be temporary, but just he never left.”

In expensive San Francisco, there is no shortage of shared living situations and roommate disputes. But Cohn and others say the situation at 1538 Jones St. was beyond the pale…(more)

We have heard a lot of horror stories about housemates and tenants from hell. What will it take for someone to step in and solve this problem? How many more rental units would go on the market if the laws that protect landlords from nightmare tenants were not curtailed? There has to be a way for people to protect themselves from predators. Which our of supervisors will solve this problem?

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)