spotlight : sfexaminer – excerpt (includes audio track)

Several months after the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake damaged a half dozen red-tagged South of Market warehouses and SRO’s beyond repair, The TODCO Group’s President John Elberling and Deputy Mayor Brad Paul went to Mayor Art Agnos with a shocking proposal: “Let’s make Sixth Street an Earthquake Recovery redevelopment area to replace all the lost housing and build new neighborhood facilities for its 2,500 SRO tenants and the longtime SOMA Filipino-American community.” “Are you sure you want redevelopment on skid row?” asked the surprised mayor. “We have to,” Elberling replied. “If we don’t start to build our future Sixth Street community now there will never be one.” “Ok,” Agnos responded, “but responsibility for the consequences will be on you.”

TODCO was the community nonprofit housing company founded by “TOOR,” the strident opponents of the Yerba Buena Redevelopment Project and its bulldozer demolition of thousands of SRO units for the Moscone Convention Center 20 years before. Since then, TODCO had built three senior replacement housing residences in Yerba Buena nearby, two named after those founders, Woolf House and Mendelsohn House. That’s why Mayor Agnos was so surprised to hear TODCO’s bold proposal to use the intimidating powers of redevelopment for SOMA community building instead of downtown expansion and commercial development as usual. 33 years later the results of the two decade “South of Market Redevelopment Area” project, which ended suddenly when Governor Jerry Brown halted all redevelopment statewide, are the foundation for SOMA’s lower-income communities today…

To begin with, over the next 25 years 1,018 units of permanently affordable housing for the lower-income SRO tenants and families of South of Market were built in 17 nonprofit projects in the Project Area with Redevelopment Agency financial support. Two residential hotels that were damaged beyond repair by the earthquake were replaced with newly-built SRO’s with 246 total low-rent units, including first, TODCO’s own Knox SRO built on the cleared Sixth Street former location of the red-tagged and demolished Anglo Hotel, and later the new Plaza Apartments…(more)

By Zelda Bronstein : 48hills – excerpt

Crucial planning decisions are made behind closed-doors, with Yimby stakeholders—and the public can’t even get the basic records.

Ben Metcalf directed the California Department of Housing and Community Development from November 2015 to September 2019. In February 2021, Metcalf, now managing director of the Terner Center of Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley, said that the state’s new housing laws had given his former employer “the potential to be moving like the CIA. Most of the time, HCD’s work is done below the waterline.”

He meant that as a tribute to HCD’s effectiveness.

Covert operations are usually hidden from the public. But three months later, HCD advertised its penchant for secrecy. As it prepared to update the statewide housing plan in May 2021, the agency invited members of the public to share their views of California’s housing policies via a series of online “listening sessions.” Then it refused to divulge what it had heard, claiming that to do so would violate privacy.

It appears that the privacy that was allegedly at risk was HCD’s. In response to my Public Records Act request to see the messages entered in Chat and staff notes from the meetings, HCD stated that those records “contain confidential information and it has been determined that the public interest in not disclosing this confidential information clearly outweighs the public interest in its disclosure. This confidential information is exempt from disclosure under deliberative process exemption set forth in Government Code section 6255 and these records have been withheld. Megan Kirkeby, Deputy Director of the Housing Policy Development Division is responsible for withholding these records.”… (more)

Read the rest of this online and comment if you can. The more we see of these Sacramento Politicians’  efforts to remove public participation in government matters, the more we need to pry. Many books and articles have been writing detailing what and how they are doing it, but so far no one has come up with a reason why. They do our elected representatives spend so much time and energy removing public oversight and review of their work? Who determined the government should decide how we live and what is the end game? Let’s keep on watching and searching for the motive behind the lies and the coverups. Are they just keeping us busy watching their housing manipulations what something much more nefarious is going on?

by Gennady Sheyner : PaloAltoOnline – excerpt

Palo Alto mayor has consistently opposed housing laws

Palo Alto Mayor Lydia Kou, a staunch critic of California’s approach to encourage more housing, announced on Monday, May 15, that she plans to run for the state Assembly.

Kou, a Realtor who has been serving on the City Council since 2016 and is now in her second term, hopes to win a seat in a district currently being represented by Assembly member Marc Berman, another former Palo Alto City Council member, in the 2024 election. The 23rd Assembly District includes Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Mountain View, Atherton, Woodside, Pacifica, Ladera, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Portola Valley, Saratoga and Campbell.

Unlike Berman, a reliable vote of support for recent housing bills that have created streamlined and by-right processes for housing developments, Kou has strongly opposed recent laws that aim to encourage more housing by limiting cities’ powers to reject residential developments. In March, she used her “State of the City” speech as a platform to attack recent Sacramento bills such as Senate Bill 9, which allows split lots in single-family zones; SB 10, which creates a process for cities to build at higher densities in transit-rich areas than underlying zoning would normally allow; and SB 35, which created a streamlined approval process for housing projects in jurisdictions that fail to meet their housing quotas…(more)

By Mark Ein, CityLab Transportation : Bloomberg – excerpt (includes video)

• Without help, agencies warn of higher fares, service cuts
• Top transit systems see total $6.6 billion shortfall by 2026…

By Skylar Woodhouse

The post-pandemic reality for America’s public transportation is bleak. Work from home has solidly set in, leaving transit agencies that rely on fare-box revenue facing a fiscal cliff.

As pandemic aid dwindles, the nation’s biggest transit systems face a roughly $6.6 billion shortfall through fiscal year 2026, according to a Bloomberg tally of the top eight US transportation agencies based on passenger trips. Rising labor costs and inflation are hitting as farebox revenue stagnates after ridership collapsed. Those eight agencies serve regions that combined contribute about $6 trillion annually to the national economy…

Local officials are pressing for help. Last month, the California Transit Association asked the state for $5.15 billion over the next five fiscal years. Without more money, transit officials across the country warn that the public can expect steep ticket price increases and drastic cuts to train and bus schedules, while long-planned expansion projects are on the chopping block. That pleading worked for New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority when state lawmakers recently approved a massive bailout.

“If it doesn’t get the kind of funding it needs not just to survive but thrive, service will decrease, people will be unable to rely on it, they will be forced to buy cars if they can, take on massive debt to afford those cars.” said Stephanie Lotshaw, acting executive director at TransitCenter, a public transit advocacy group. “All of these outcomes that we are trying to rectify will get worse if we don’t, if we let these systems fail.”…(more)

Proof that we were always working for them (the public transit industry). They were never working for us. Government claimed their goal is to cut traffic, especially comuter traffic jams. COVID did that for them by creating work-from-home options. At the same time large corporations realized they did not need to spend huge amounts of money on rent if their workers worked from home, and given the large number who can and do, they cut back on traffic and commuters. Many of the essential services jobs require a personal vehicle so that is what you have left. Now it is up to the governments to figure out how to re-purpose all those empty office spaces they built, against the wishes of some communities. Not too many people will weep when the building investors go bankrupt. They did their share of bankrupting a lot of people on their way to the top.

By Jackson Stromberg : thecoastnews – excerpt

I am dreaming.

The California Legislators and bureaucrats working on housing would look to the future (say 8 years for the next cycle and 16 years for the following cycle). They envision what may happen, take responsibility and act accordingly.

There is a political steamroller coming from Sacramento to deny local input on housing on the theory that any kind of housing whatsoever is always good, and they know best.

The system is eager to build, build and build. Everyone profits: contractors, plumbers, carpenters, developers, mega investors, money managers, appliance salesmen and on and on.

These politics are indeed powerful. The issue that should be honestly addressed is how this will play out in the long run.

The opportunity for new homeowners will be squeezed out in favor of a landlord/tenant model. There goes the American dream. There goes my dream.… (more)

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By MAE ANDERSON, ASHRAF KHALIL and MICHAEL CASEY : msn – excerpt

NEW YORK (AP) — On the 31st floor of what was once a towering office building in downtown Manhattan, construction workers lay down steel bracing for what will soon anchor a host of residential amenities: a catering station, lounge, fire pit and gas grills…

The building, empty since 2021, is being converted to 588 market-rate rental apartments that will house about 1,000 people. “We’re taking a vacant building and pouring life not only into this building, but this entire neighborhood,” said Joey Chilelli, managing director of real estate firm Vanbarton Group, which is doing the conversion…(more)

Will San Francisco get off its high horse and follow some other cities who are solving the empty office problem for a change?

by Dan Walters : calmatters – excerpt

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has anointed himself as the avenging angel who will rain down righteous – or self-righteous – punishment on ideological heretics in red states such as Florida, Texas, Arkansas and Mississippi.

“All across the country rights are being rolled back in real-time by Republicans,” Newsom warned in a fundraising text message last week, just hours after it was revealed that former President Donald Trump was being indicted in New York. “They cry ‘freedom’ but work overtime to dismantle our democracy to protect their power to dictate the choices people are allowed to make.

“I am going to flip that narrative on its head,” Newsom promised.

Two days later, having created a new political organization to finance assaults on prominent Republicans, he embarked on a tour of four red states to rally Democratic opposition to their GOP governors… (more)