By Tim Redmond : 48hills – excerpt

Thanks to Sen. Wiener and our own delegation, San Francisco may be in serious trouble in four years—and it won’t be the city’s fault.

I have been talking to folks at the City Planning Department to follow up on my analysis of the numbers in the Housing Element, and after a good amount of research, I think can fairly conclude the following:

The state, thanks to the likes of Sen. Scott Wiener, has totally screwed San Francisco.

Here’s what’s really going on:

Under Wiener’s state law, every city has to submit a plan, which in SF has become part of the Housing Element, that shows how the community is going to meet its Regional Housing Needs Assessment goals. The RHNA process is ridiculous and the goals are a farce.

Nevertheless, if San Francisco doesn’t show progress toward meeting those goals, the city could lose out on transportation and housing money (imagine: if we don’t have enough money to fund enough affordable housing, they will take away affordable housing money; what a brilliant, effective plan.)…

More: If the state decides to decertify the city’s Housing Element, which could happen four years from now, then San Francisco in effect loses all control over local development and developers can build anything they want, almost anywhere they want, with very little public input or oversight.

That’s what’s called the “Builder’s Option”—and it’s a very real threat to San Francisco.…(more)