Category Archives: deregulated housing bills

CEQA, deregulated housing bills, Housing, Politics

OPINION: What the Judges and the LA Times Got Wrong About The Venice Median Project (and Why it Ain’t Over Till it’s Over)

Opinion By Charles Rosin : westsidecurrent – excerpt (includes audio)

VENICE – We seriously doubt whether the Op-Ed writers who penned last week’s editorial for the ideologically-driven LA Times praising Judge Richard Fruin’s dispiriting dismissal of our CEQA case have ever opted to spend a lazy Sunday afternoon in summer exploring what a recent poll in Travel and Leisure described as ‘America’s Favorite Beach.’

How else can you explain the Op-Ed writers’ description of our area’s last parcel of open space– a large, 2.65-acre, parking lot designed to accommodate carloads of working-class families from Inglewood, DTLA, and other land-locked enclaves who flock to Venice Beach to make memories and find relief from the swelter– as “one of those rare open swaths of land that city officials dream of using for homeless and affordable-housing”.

Really? That’s what these people dream about? No vicarious images of little kids at the shore with a shovel and pail? Or proud grandparents pushing strollers down Ocean Front Walk? Or couples unloading their canoe for a romantic paddle down the Linnie Canal?

It makes us wonder if any of these city officials ever wake up in the middle of the night from a recurring nightmare; tracking what could happen when you build a massive (and massively expensive) 140-unit “affordable” housing project, on an environmentally-fraught juncture on The Venice Median, one half-block from the beach, predicted by the EPA to be particularly vulnerable to sea-level rise?

And while dreaming, do the city officials who enabled this project ever get swamped by visions of coastal flooding impacting their newly constructed Venice-Dell Community? (Ironically, designed as a fortress to be cut off from its surrounding communities which would provide “shelter from the storm”). …

And since The Times insists affordable housing is “desperately needed” in our part of town, how about assigning one of the few real reporters left on its staff to delve into how 1200 units of taxpayer-funded projects can sit empty in a city that is ostensibly “all-hands-on-deck”, as first reported in a stunning bit of investigative journalism provided by Chris LeGras and Jamie Page for the Westside Current…

As with its previous editorials, what passes these days as the Times’s Braintrust opted to give Venice Community Housing’s Executive Director, Becky Dennison, free-reign expressing her frustration with City-Attorney Hydee Soto Feldstein’s decision to halt all work on the project by the city’s Department of Transportation and its Bureau of Engineering until the two law suits we filed on behalf of The Coalition for Safe Coastal Development had been resolved, or settled in mediation…

Mayor Bass does not deserve to be attacked, but praised for her tireless commitment to work with numerous City Council Members, to reduce encampments on our streets, parks, and public spaces while transitioning the willing into shelters and other arrangements.

We here at Safe Coastal also have great admiration for Mayor Bass’s role as a prime supporter of a new and improved replacement to the state’s soon-to-expire and problematic CEQA exemption. AB785, which the Governor signed into law in 2023, includes many of the exemptions housing advocates want, while excluding construction within a mapped FEMA 100-year flood zone. (**)…(more)

 

 

 

CEQA, deregulated housing bills, Politics

California Coastal Commission responds to report it worsens housing crisis: ‘Disgraceful’

By Jenavieve Hatch, themodesto : yahoo – excerpt

The California Coastal Commission Thursday said a soon-to-be-published report alleging it has worsened the affordable housing crisis has “profoundly dishonest and offensive” claims.

Circulate San Diego, a Southern California think thank, asserts in a study to be published Friday that the commission has worsened the affordable housing crisis, and “has made the coast the least accessible part of California.”

The findings were published in Thursday’s Bee, and later in the day, the commission fired back.

“This disgraceful excuse for a report intentionally distorts and misrepresents actions taken by the Coastal Commission,” said Coastal Commission Chair Caryl Hart in a statement to The Bee.

“It even goes so far as to say the commission is manipulating the law to promote racial segregation in the Coastal Zone, which is profoundly dishonest and offensive.”

The report, which The Bee has reviewed, cited research showing that the Coastal Zone is twice as white as the rest of California.

“The report is clearly a developer-backed hit piece masquerading as an academic endeavor,” said Hart…(more)

If this isn’t enough to get your blood boiling I don’t know what is. The State of California has declared war on the pacific Coast. What are we going to do about it? Ready to fight back against these accusations. Read the below article and see why the only way to deal with these lies is to support the ourneighborhoodvoices initiative, and replace the representatives in California who are selling our state.

RELATED:
Report accuses California Coastal Commission of adding to racially segregated housing…   A Southern California-based think tank, Circulate San Diego, published a report this Thursday morning that highlights the need for reform at the California Coastal Commission…(more)

 

 

deregulated housing bills, Housing

Developer wants to ‘supersize’ S.F. project under new state housing law — while it ’s being built

By Laura Waxmann : sfchronicle – excerpt

Oakland developer oWow is the latest builder planning to “supersize” a previously approved project in San Francisco due to a recent change in state law.

An application filed with the city’s Planning Department on Wednesday proposes updates to the design of 960 Howard St. in the Central SoMa neighborhood, which, in recent years, was approved for redevelopment into a three-story creative office building with a 9-story, 113-unit residential addition.

Developer oWow purchased the site, that was long home to a small industrial building, in 2019 and has nearly completed the three-story office component of the plan. It is now seeking to add a total of 16 stories of high density housing.

“The approved 113 units will not achieve a product that meets the returns that anybody would want to invest in today to get that project started,” said Danny Haber, oWow’s CEO and co-founder. “It is not financially feasible.”

The new plan proposes a total of 274 rental units. If approved and constructed as currently designed, the project would provide 158 studio apartments and 116 two-bedroom apartments. Out of the total proposed apartments, 42 units would be designated as affordable housing while the remaining units would be rented at market rates.

Per the application filed Thursday, the approved three-story office building would serve as the base of the residential tower — in total, the project would rise 19 stories.

The Central SoMa District limits building heights in the area to 85 feet, but OWow has proposed using the State Density Bonus law, which provides a density boost of up to 50% in exchange for greater affordability for very low income households, to waive that cap.

And, as a result of Assembly Bill 1287, a new state law that became effective this year, that 50% density bonus can be doubled so long as 15% of a qualifying project’s residential units are set aside for “middle income” households earning up to 120% of the Area Median Income, or AMI. …(more)

deregulated housing bills, Housing, Politics

Did one of California’s biggest new housing reforms go too far?

By Chris Elmendorf : sfchronicle – excerpt

The state desperately needs changes to its housing laws. But did a recent fix create more problems than it solved?

Last month, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law a package of more than 50 housing bills. Most seemed inconspicuous, but sometimes changing just a few words in a statute makes a world of difference.

AB1287 is a case in point. It makes a small tweak to a state law that gives developers “bonuses” for building low-income housing.

On the books since the 1970s, the Density Bonus Law has a simple idea at its core: If a developer agrees to dedicate some units in a project to affordable housing, it should be allowed to make its project a little larger than a city’s rules otherwise allow. For example, if a builder dedicates 10% of the units to low-income housing, it receives a size bonus of 20%. This allows a site zoned for 40 units to be developed with 48.

AB1287 makes a seemingly minor change allowing developers to base their number-of-units calculation on what is allowed by a city’s general plan for land use rather than a city’s zoning. 

This might sound like a hair-splitting distinction. It is not…

Continue reading Did one of California’s biggest new housing reforms go too far? →

deregulated housing bills, Housing

Big San Jose apartment complex may convert to all-affordable units

By George Avalos : mercurynews – excerpt (audio track)

City officials prep decision to clear path for conversion

SAN JOSE — A big apartment complex in downtown San Jose could be converted into an affordable homes property, a shift that would terminate its status as market-rate housing.

Modera The Alameda, a 168-unit apartment building on The Alameda near the SAP Center and Diridon train station, is currently slated to be transformed into an affordable housing complex.

The San Jose City Council is scheduled to meet Nov. 14 to consider a conversion proposal for Modera. This decision also includes a financing package to enable the transformation to affordable housing.

A $100 million package of tax-exempt bonds to finance the purchase of Modera The Alameda is the funding centerpiece of the affordable housing conversion, according to documents on file with San Jose officials…

The proposal though, would remove Modera from the property tax rolls — which means the complex would no longer generate property tax revenue once the new owner takes over…(more)

Here is a relatively new program that seems to rely on government funds to convert market rate to “affordable” housing. What does this do to the tax basis? And is this a reasonable approach to generate affordable housing?

CEQA, deregulated housing bills, Housing, Politics

These 12 secret power players are shaping the Bay Area housing market

By Susie Neilson, Emma Stiefel, J.K. Dineen and Lauren Hepler : sfchronicle – excerpt (includes audio track)

Last year, The Chronicle obtained data on almost every property in the Bay Area — about 2.3 million unique records. We were hoping the data would be a treasure trove of information about real estate ownership in the region, allowing us to easily identify who owns what, and thus pinpoint the most powerful corporate owners of rental housing.

Quickly, we learned it wasn’t so simple. California doesn’t have hard-and-fast rules on how property owners identify themselves; large corporations, hedge funds and even wealthy families often purchase multiple homes through shell companies or trusts, shielding their names from ownership records. It’s only by carefully tracing networks of ownership that one can start to grasp how much property an entity actually has.

So we redoubled our efforts. During the past year, The Chronicle analyzed these property records, which were collected from county assessors’ offices, plus nearly 7 million unique business records. We used machine learning methods to parse the data and called on dozens of experts and additional data sources. This work yielded a list of 12 of the Bay Area’s largest, most influential ownership networks. We believe this is an unprecedented effort to uncover rental ownership and management networks across all nine counties in the region: Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano and Sonoma…

We still aren’t sure we’ve captured all of the Bay Area’s largest owners, but we’re confident this list of 12 includes some of the region’s major power players in residential real estate, housing tens of thousands of families in nearly 7,000 assessor-defined properties from San Jose to Santa Rosa…

Even if the owner of your property isn’t on our list, you can learn more about who owns it by using our map of nearly 2.3 million Bay Area properties here. You may read more about our methodology here.

Read why transparency matters…

Navigate to our content

One company operates thousands of San Francisco apartments. Just don’t call them a landlord

This map reveals who owns every property in the S.F. Bay Area…

Invitation Homes
Michael Marr
Greystar
Woodmont / Tad Taube
Equity Residential
John Vidovich
Neill Sullivan / REO Homes
Essex
UDR, Inc.
Tricon Residential
AvalonBay
Ardenbrook / Ardenwood…(more)

RELATED:

This map reveals who owns every property in the S.F. Bay Area

By Emma Stiefel and Susie Neilson: sfchronicle – excerpt

This tool will help you investigate your landlord or anyone else’s

To our knowledge, there has never been a centralized database where someone could see who owns any property in the nine-county Bay Area region, making it difficult to investigate connections between the powerful forces that shape the housing market for all. So The Chronicle built one.

Type in your full address, or any Bay Area address, to see who officially owns nearly any building. The map contains data on almost 2.3 million properties registered across the Bay Area’s nine counties, which The Chronicle obtained in summer 2021…(more)

CEQA, deregulated housing bills, Housing

City Hall proposes a deal to regain control of Builders Remedy projects

by Matthew Hall : smdp – excerpt

Thirteen controversial oversized developments could be reined in if a proposed settlement goes through. The quid pro quo is the City will settle several lawsuits with the developer WS Communities. The City of Santa Monica wants to bring 13 Builders Remedy projects back into the regular development pipeline at their May 9 meeting through incentives created as part of a settlement with the developer.

City Hall has proposed settling several lawsuits with several companies related to WS Communities, the development company owned by Neil Shekhter that applied for 13 of the 16 Builder’s Remedy projects. While the cases being settled are entirely unrelated to the Builders Remedy projects, the terms include a clause that offers WS Communities incentives to drop the otherwise unstoppable projects.

WS Communities and its subsidiaries have been engaged in several lawsuits with the city over tenant harassment and the city’s leasing rules. At the May 9 meeting, Council will be presented with a settlement that covers those cases.

“The Settlement Agreement provides financial benefits for three recently displaced tenants of 1242 10th Street and guarantees them the right to return. The Settlement Agreement would also authorize the transfer of 20 deed-restricted affordable units from 1560 Lincoln Blvd to 1038-42 10th Street,” said the staff report.

However, the deal includes an additional clause independent of the leasing/harassment cases. The settlement offers WS several incentives to reenter the normal development process. It allows the developer to combine affordable housing requirements from individual projects into a single location while preserving State density bonuses that would otherwise be invalid if affordable housing were combined. It also offers increased allowable parking in their developments…

The Santa Monica Coalition for a Liveable City (SMCLC) opposes the deal saying the information presented so far lacks important details.

“This proposed settlement is essentially a mega development agreement – the biggest one in the city’s history,” said Diana Gorden on behalf or SMCLC in an email sent to Council. “Given this, there needs to be a high degree of disclosure as to what is being built and what the real-life benefits and burdens to the community will be if implemented. And there needs to be a more open and transparent process and sufficient notice than simply adding, almost as an afterthought, an administrative item to an already packed Council agenda.”…(more)

CEQA, deregulated housing bills, Housing, Politics

A 50-story housing proposal is shaking up planning officials in San Francisco

By Josh Niland : archinet – excerpt

A proposed new high-rise development in San Francisco’s Outer Sunset district is standing out over its disputed manipulation of statewide density laws.

The LA Times is reporting on CH Planning‘s unlikely new proposal, which could add a Solomon Cordwell Buenz-designed 50-story tower to the neighborhood via provisions in California’s Density Bonus Law — a regulation they say allows for permitted deviations from local building restrictions to provide options for affordable housing.

“It simply defies logic that a building in a 100-foot height district seeking a 50% bonus could somehow rise to 560 feet,” Daniel Sider, chief of staff for San Francisco’s Planning Department said in a rebuke published by the newspaper. “While we agree that this site is ripe for housing, and we hope to work with the developer to achieve that, there is no provision in state or local law to permit the downtown-style building that’s been proposed.”

“The proposed project is flat out inconsistent with local zoning rules and state density bonus laws,” Rich Hillis, the city’s planning director, added. “It sets back our efforts to appropriately add housing on the City’s west side and meet our Housing Element targets. Frankly, it’s a distraction.”

(He also told the San Francisco Chronicle that CH “misrepresents what’s allowed by the planning code and state density bonus.”)…(more)

On the other hand… Atherton residents are crying foul and threatening to sue. Could they join the growing number of outraged wealthy enclaves who may turn the tide? Parts of San Mateo County are in Wiener’s district and some of them have deep pockets of cash at their disposal.
This may not only hurt Wiener. D-6, Haney’s former density district are the least satisfied with city services. They live in the dense housing model planned for the rest of San Francisco neighborhoods and they are not happy with it. Many empty over-priced units are up for grabs there. Wait until the earth begins to shake under their feet.

RELATED: Two wealthy enclaves that might fight the state:

‘Ridiculous’: Atherton residents call for revolt over housing plan revisions

This exclusive island town might be California’s biggest violator of affordable housing law

deregulated housing bills, Housing, Planning, Politics

Housing for ‘families’ or corporate rentals?

By Tim Redmond : 48hihlls – excerpt

Planning Commission approves the conversion of units that were supposed to help the housing crisis into very expensive places for short-term use.

When the Planning Commission approved a condo project at 1863 Mission in 2018, the staff wrote: The Project will add 37 units to the City’s housing stock, including 15 two-bedroom, family-sized units and will replace long vacant site that has been a blight to the neighborhood with a high quality mixed-income development.

That’s typical. We hear this over and over when developers want to build market-rate housing: Families in San Francisco need places to live.

When the supes rejected the Environmental Impact Report for 469 Stevenson, Yimby Law noted: Hundreds of families were denied housing in San Francisco because of Supervisors Gordon Mar, Dean Preston, Myrna Melgar, Connie Chan, Rafael Mandelman, Aaron Peskin, Hillary Ronen, and Shamann Walton.

But as of today, the planners have agreed that at least seven of the units at 1863 Mission will not be available for families who need housing. They will be corporate rentals, in essence high-priced hotel rooms for people who are in the city for more than 30 days but less than a year…(more)

Some of us have a different approach to the “landlord’s dilemma,” that strikes at the heart of the Tenants Bill of Rights by proposing a compromise that not only protects landlords from risky tenants, but also protects tenants from risky sub-letters, friends, family, and scammers who take advantage of the Tenants Bill of Rights. Too many cases of bad outcomes from turning temporary arrangements into long term nightmares, as depicted here: “Housemate From Hell Forces Elderly SF Artist To Move Across the Country”

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? How can we level the playing field?

deregulated housing bills, Housing, Politics

Bay Area Cities Just Lost Zoning Control. See the Wildest Homes That Could Come to Your Neighborhood

By Sarah Wright : sfstandard – excerpt

The state’s Jan. 31 deadline has come and gone, and 69 out of 109 jurisdictions in the Bay Area have failed to submit their required eight-year housing plan to the state.

Advocacy groups like YIMBY Law are already suing cities and counties, claiming they’ve violated state law by missing the deadline. But in the meantime, developers are preparing to file projects under the “builder’s remedy,” which means cities and counties cannot deny housing projects just because they violate local zoning plans.

That enticing possibility brought a crowd to Downtown San Francisco on Wednesday night, where housing advocates and architects gathered to celebrate the chance to build more aggressively and to share their dream projects.

The proposals offer a glimpse into what new developments might be popping up in cities, from Berkeley to Hillsborough, that are out of compliance with state law…(more)