gentrification | Discoveryink

Kevin V. Nguyen : sfstandard – excerpt

Thirteen years ago, Veritas Investments took advantage of the fallout from the Great Recession to start snapping up San Francisco homes by the thousands at a steep discount.

Fueled by a combination of private equity investment and lots of debt, Veritas continued its buying spree in the years that followed—eventually becoming the city’s largest residential landlord by 2016.

Now, amid a pandemic-induced real estate crash, a new outfit is poised to take Veritas’ place. Another opportunistic group—this time, a partnership between Ballast Investments and Brookfield Properties—has swooped in to buy up nearly $1 billion of mortgages that Veritas had defaulted on, public records show.

As a result, over 2,100 units across 76 apartment buildings in the city will have a new owner by the month’s end. While the foreclosed properties are technically on the market, industry observers say it’s most likely Ballast and Brookfield will just assume ownership of the buildings themselves, as they are now effectively Veritas’s lender…(more)

By Tim Redmond : 48jills – excerpt

The battle over People’s Park has been raging since I was in sixth grade, and we could spend a huge amount of time talking about the role of the three-acre lot in the history of Berkeley. It’s been a point of contention representing so much and so many issues, and it’s back in the news now that UC Berkeley once again is trying to build a dorm on the site as part of a much larger campus expansion plan.

And this week, the Court of Appeal for the First Circuit of California issued a ruling on what started out as a technical legal issue around the project but has now, potentially, changed the way environmental law applies to cities in Northern California.

Specifically, the tentative court ruling holds that gentrification and displacement are issues that have to be analyzed under the California Environmental Quality Act.

That would, among other things, justify the Board of Supes decision on 469 Stevenson Street and force the city and developers to do an entirely new type of analysis before they put luxury housing projects in vulnerable communities.

This isn’t final: The opinion is still in draft form, and won’t be finalized until after the court hears oral arguments Jan. 12. Even if the court sticks to its tentative ruling, the Supreme Court could take up the case.

But if it holds, development-friendly folks are already freaking out. From today’s Business Times… (more)

Alameda Court cases are not always predictable and this case proves that point. Will this become a precedent setting case or only a blip on the radar? Stay tuned.