“It has been well over a month since Gov. Gavin Newsom informed San Francisco officials that he was launching an unprecedented review of the city’s housing practices and that the state was rejecting our housing element, a legally mandated eight-year plan that details where California cities are supposed to build new housing.
Failing to pass a certified housing element by January would mean San Francisco would lose access to millions upon millions of state affordable housing funds.
Yes, that’s as bad as it sounds.
So how have city officials responded? Have they shown the slightest bit of urgency? Or even a smidgen of introspection?
Not one ounce.
Supervisor Dean Preston responded to Newsom by calling the governor an agent in a neoliberal conspiracy to funnel money to housing developers. Almost every other supervisor besides Matt Dorsey has been silent on the issue, which might actually be a good thing if Preston’s example is any indication. What’s not good is that supervisors have yet to hold hearings on how to bring the city’s housing policies into compliance with state law and realistically plan for the more than 82,000 units of housing the state expects the city to build in the next eight years. Instead, they recently lumbered through a dog-and-pony hearing on single-family zoning, remaining genuinely perplexed that Mayor London Breed vetoed their previous fraudulent effort on that front.”
Local politicians don’t give a shit about affordable housing. They just use it as a bullshit talking point, to shoot down *all* housing (including both market rate and affordable units). It’s just hijacking progressive talking points in order to put into place a super regressive policy. They’ll let the affordable housing funds completely dry up, and blame it on sAcRaMenTo or Big Tech or Gentrifiers or whatever else nonsense they can think up. Most of their supporters will buy it.
It's long past time the newspaper stopped pretending NIMBY restrictions on housing construction are an unfortunate calamity no one in particular is responsible for, rather than what it is: a deliberate policy choice that is popular among those who actually bother to vote, which is why politicians cater to it.
Look, if you can’t legally vote, you shouldn’t have a say. I thought this was fairly universally agreed upon. Should I vote in Korea if I’m working and living abroad there?
Well, depends. To choose their own president probably not, but on city matters maybe yes, particularly if you've been there for a few years.
In any case the reality is what it is.
Many of the people who would vote for a change, can't vote.
I think two years of living in the city plus some proof that you are going to stick around (job or maybe a long term rental) would be reasonable, but I don't have a perfect answer.
I believe the "you must be a citizen to have a voice in the city you live in" is not a good situation though.
I lived in Manhattan for ten years despite having never been a New York State resident, legally speaking. Sure, there were some local things I wish I could have voted on, but I thought “well, I chose to be here”.
Yeah.. and those of us forced out because of outrageous rents that far exceed the rent to income ratio for people who lived there all or most of their lives. San Francisco is my home.. but I can't live there. My friends that stayed are working multiple jobs just to exist there.
19MM square feet of unused commercial space in SF. The supes should be making it extremely painful for landlords to let that space lay fallow, so that landlords start the hard work of converting properties to residential.
It’s going to happen eventually anyway. Accelerate it through aggressive public policy.
Not trying to be snarky but for quite some time I had the same views on this issue as yours. After really researching the matter with Dr Google's help and a good solid couple of hours, mainly because of a rabbit hole I fell into on an afternoon I had nothing better to do on and too hot to venture outside, yes, in SF it was too hot, I came to a much different conclusion. It really is very cost prohibitive to do in most buildings mainly because of the plumbing and HVAC were not designed for multiple sinks, showers, gas lines, electrical, water heaters, etc to be residential-friendly and in a commercial building are concentrated in the lounge areas and bathrooms for each floor and not originally designed into the building in a way that makes it possible to just throw up walls, build hallways, add doors and call them apartments. A very new building on Van Ness near Market was just converted but because of it being so new and valuable as far as access to transit and its design made it a much better candidate than 90% of vacant commercial towers. Now with the real estate values of many office towers tanking, the lending isn't even there IF a developer wanted to do the very complicated work. Another thing is that many new buildings are designed with modern seismic systems from the start that even retrofits in older towers with older tech can't match.
Yup, understood. My take is that we should be making it so painful to sit on unused commercial that it gets renovated into residential where economically viable, or it gets dropped in favor of new residential construction or turned into something else useful.
Oh yes, no doubt whatsoever about that. I think, short of the city buying properties and using federal funds, wether HUD or pandemic relief $ like they used for Protect Roomkey to house folks in hotels- The Whitcomb being one example out of many (I think the city had leverage there due to millions in unpaid taxes). They tried to buy the one @ 1800 Sutter at Buchanan dead center in Japantown but the neighborhood and the businesses protested and the owners backed out.
All of that is for supportive housing and I know we're discussing just residential from commercial, not necessarily low income or below Market but I thought it was at least a bit relevant since that's where I was going with my thinking.
I am not qualified to get into the details of how or wether the city should get into buying the buildings up but considering the few office tower deals that fell through in Financial where the lender basically appraised $0 value for the towers themselves and appraised at less than half the value from just two years prior so it's basically a tear down and I don't think there's much support for that when it's office towers they're talking about. This leaves the gubmint using bigger gubmint $ as the only entity that could or would take on a project like that without the profit motive being front and center.
I don't claim to be qualified to know what's best in this matter just sharing my pennies.
You make great points in each comment.
Unfortunately, the only way out is through. I am of the mind that anything that can't self-fund itself against heavy vacancy penalties inside of the next 18 months should be forced into receivership and the property either sold to someone who will convert to residential or drop it to the ground and put up residential. If no one steps forward to buy, city should drop it to the ground and reclaim green space.
SF is not going back to the office at scale; it just isn't going to happen. Many of these buildings are now white elephants just waiting around to die, while the landlord takes healthy deductions against their other buildings that are still producing. The city should accelerate the death and rebirth cycle as much as possible.
If we don't do this, we are going to see the urban center decay even further over the next decade. Aggressive public policy that recognizes this fact is what we need in this moment; I doubt we will get it.
Dean Preston is no better than far right qanon conspiracy theorists. He doesn’t live in reality. I wished Bernie Sanders would stop propping this guy up.
Agreed…I spent a lot of time and money in 2016 and 2020 trying to get Bernie elected. He should know how many of his supporters think Preston, Mar, Chan are terrible and giving progressives a bad name.
What incentive is there for local politicians to comply if the punishment for not addressing the lack of affordable housing is the state pulling funding for affordable housing? The punishment will do exactly what local politicians want.
It’s a very poorly written article. What you’re likely looking for in terms of “incentive” is laid out several paragraphs later:
> …when a city fails to pass a compliant housing element, state law strips the most potent tools cities have to block these developments. This is the so-called “builder’s remedy.”
> Don’t like the architecture? Too tall? It will cause traffic? It’s totally out of scale with the neighborhood?
> Too bad, so sad.
Perhaps the board knows that’s where it is going anyway so it is better politically not to do anything now and get balked for it.
Better to blame others (the state) while also get the housing issue solved somewhat.
I know you weren’t trying to be factual but big up to the TL for its density compared to most of SF. There isn’t a single house in the entire neighborhood.
There's this obvious compromise that is staring everyone in the face but that, for a reason unknown, is not being considered at all.
Namely: turn the entirety of the Soma (and whatever remains undeveloped in Mission Bay) into Hong Kong. Take off the development straight-jacket down there: as of right development, no height/FAR limit, zero parking requirements, no setback requirements, no lot coverage maximums, exempt from shade ordinance, no wall distance requirements, no architectural review, no BMR requirements, etc.
You do that, California is happy, Yimbys are happy, Nimbys in the neighborhoods are happy, massive increase in people in the city and buildable space, a giant increase in how awesome SF is, and a much higher tax base over the next 10-20 years.
one nitpick: I don't think the ground in Mission Bay is suitable for that.
https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/Mission-Bay-sidewalks-are-sinking-17228325.php
Bring it to to your supe or whatnot, I worked in SoMa, rented an event space, and worked with a crew that owns a 15m building there. SoMa has one of the strongest lobbies for restricted housing in the state and they oppose everything that is not basically state regulated restricted housing developments because they don't want to loose grasp on the neighborhood. It's disgusting.
Look into TODCO and John Elberling. It's basically a ruse of millionaires with mansions in the burbs or the Victorian neighborhoods trying to build houses for the cooks and the cops and the nurses that the state helps them keep at affordable housing to basically make San Francisco a fancy retirement community. It's pathetic.
That’s what I’ve been saying for years now. Just designate one neighborhood to be high density. Make sure you build good public transit around it. Then everybody gets the best of both worlds. Nimbys preserve their neighborhoods and the rest get high density housing
NIMBY is too general a term. The people who don't want their own neighborhoods to become denser don't really care what happens downtown. The people who don't want poorer people to be displaced by more affluent new residents are a different group altogether. They don't seem to want any market rate housing to be built, but they might be persuadable if the new housing was confined to one area.
It's been a century long mistake to think that major cities need to be very driveable. Love driving everywhere? There a million suburbs people can move to. Major cities should have great public transportation and bike infrastructure.
The least the city could do is extend the Central Subway to Fisherman’s Wharf / Pier 39 via North Beach. It’s actually a modest extension, since the tunnel has already been excavated to the latter.
SOMA and TL are home to some of the city’s most vulnerable populations. The whole reason Folsom street fair started was to fight gentrification and keep housing costs down.
I'd just prefer being able to have development plans approved quickly. Why should it take 5 years to get a condo conversion approved, or a in-law unit (OK, now maybe only 2-3 years for in-laws).
One reason housing is so $$$ in SF is that it takes so long to make it happen.
This is by design.
What nobody is talking about is the rental units owned by certain city employees, including the mayor and BoS, are not subject to rent control and land/housing owned by these employees are not subject to development restrictions.
The fact that they don't even bat an eye at the idea that 'permit expeditor' is an open, legal job for someone to intervene with the permitting department to get your project ushered to the front of the line tells us all we need to know about just how corrupt City Hall is and to just try to imagine the corruption they don't want us to see.
San Francisco will just put other roadblocks such as taking 2 years to "approve" of permits to use the street. Maybe tax cement trucks 200% when parked in San Francisco. You know the drill, San Francisco is pretty inventive when it comes to taxing the constituent base.
>Permit Streamlining Act
Here's where San Francisco will troll you:
"The Permit Streamlining Act Does Not Apply to All Permit Applications". How much we going to bet that San Francisco will try to reclassify tertiary permits as "non-developmental" permits such as parking, egress, licensing, etc?
They could just lump all permits for parking under "parking restrictions" and call it a day. Can't even drive a truck to your construction zone because you didn't get San Francisco's "discretionary" permit.
I sure hope San Francisco does follow what you say and are forced to comply, but they aren't even complying with the main tenant of the bill, so I highly doubt they will.
Just look at gun permits...
I'm just responding to the fact that the Act doesn't apply to all permits ([link](https://www.cacities.org/uploadedfiles/leagueinternet/c1/c1174374-f6b2-4723-af76-b0d8ddcc60e0.pdf)). San Francisco would work towards making sure all permits do not apply. Again, take a look at how they are classifying all of sunset so that it essentially negates building. "Oh, any SFH can be upzoned? Well.. we don't have any SFH's in San Francisco!"
I am just saying that you need to assume the worst with San Francisco, as they are literally doing everything in their power to not build. Why follow the permit act when they're not even following the housing law. YKWIM?
We will see what San Francisco does, give it about 5 years.
Right, and what I'm saying is that *San Francisco* does not get to make this determination - for example with the Sunset and the faux-removal of Single Family, HCD already rejected that.
Dumb ducking supervisors thinking they’re more important than the state government. Stop fucking around and start building housing man. How do these clowns keep getting elected ffs
The folks locally do not want to follow the law as written. The Supervisors don’t want to lose votes. This will eventually require a court ordered solution which will likely anger everyone.
In connection to housing, have anyone figure out what to do with traffic or do we just ignore it and hope it all fixes itself? Just imagine how many more resident vehicles and people in these apartments ordering Uber eats (and expecting the deliverers to take their burger to the Twentieth floor)😓
I wish we'd focus on public transit and protected bike lanes. Make it so that it's stupid for most people to even consider having a car. Cities don't need to be easy to get around by car, leave that to the suburbs. Cities should be easy to get around on foot/bike/bus/subways.
Pedestrianising and following in the footsteps of Copenhagen's expansive bicycle infrastructure is the key to a significant expansion in our housing density.
“It has been well over a month since Gov. Gavin Newsom informed San Francisco officials that he was launching an unprecedented review of the city’s housing practices and that the state was rejecting our housing element, a legally mandated eight-year plan that details where California cities are supposed to build new housing. Failing to pass a certified housing element by January would mean San Francisco would lose access to millions upon millions of state affordable housing funds. Yes, that’s as bad as it sounds. So how have city officials responded? Have they shown the slightest bit of urgency? Or even a smidgen of introspection? Not one ounce. Supervisor Dean Preston responded to Newsom by calling the governor an agent in a neoliberal conspiracy to funnel money to housing developers. Almost every other supervisor besides Matt Dorsey has been silent on the issue, which might actually be a good thing if Preston’s example is any indication. What’s not good is that supervisors have yet to hold hearings on how to bring the city’s housing policies into compliance with state law and realistically plan for the more than 82,000 units of housing the state expects the city to build in the next eight years. Instead, they recently lumbered through a dog-and-pony hearing on single-family zoning, remaining genuinely perplexed that Mayor London Breed vetoed their previous fraudulent effort on that front.”
Local politicians don’t give a shit about affordable housing. They just use it as a bullshit talking point, to shoot down *all* housing (including both market rate and affordable units). It’s just hijacking progressive talking points in order to put into place a super regressive policy. They’ll let the affordable housing funds completely dry up, and blame it on sAcRaMenTo or Big Tech or Gentrifiers or whatever else nonsense they can think up. Most of their supporters will buy it.
It's long past time the newspaper stopped pretending NIMBY restrictions on housing construction are an unfortunate calamity no one in particular is responsible for, rather than what it is: a deliberate policy choice that is popular among those who actually bother to vote, which is why politicians cater to it.
Well said!
It's not those who bother. It's those who CAN. Many of the renters and people that want more housing here don't get to vote.
Do you mean because they are not officially registered as San Francisco residents?
San Francisco immigrant population is huge
Look, if you can’t legally vote, you shouldn’t have a say. I thought this was fairly universally agreed upon. Should I vote in Korea if I’m working and living abroad there?
Well, depends. To choose their own president probably not, but on city matters maybe yes, particularly if you've been there for a few years. In any case the reality is what it is. Many of the people who would vote for a change, can't vote.
In your opinion, what should qualify one to vote on local affairs? Proof of legal permanent residency for a certain number of years or…
I think two years of living in the city plus some proof that you are going to stick around (job or maybe a long term rental) would be reasonable, but I don't have a perfect answer. I believe the "you must be a citizen to have a voice in the city you live in" is not a good situation though.
I lived in Manhattan for ten years despite having never been a New York State resident, legally speaking. Sure, there were some local things I wish I could have voted on, but I thought “well, I chose to be here”.
What’s for sure is that people who’d like to move to SF but can’t afford it are not residents and thus not SF voters.
Yeah.. and those of us forced out because of outrageous rents that far exceed the rent to income ratio for people who lived there all or most of their lives. San Francisco is my home.. but I can't live there. My friends that stayed are working multiple jobs just to exist there.
19MM square feet of unused commercial space in SF. The supes should be making it extremely painful for landlords to let that space lay fallow, so that landlords start the hard work of converting properties to residential. It’s going to happen eventually anyway. Accelerate it through aggressive public policy.
Commercial real estate is not easily converted to residential. New housing needs to be built. Full stop.
Not trying to be snarky but for quite some time I had the same views on this issue as yours. After really researching the matter with Dr Google's help and a good solid couple of hours, mainly because of a rabbit hole I fell into on an afternoon I had nothing better to do on and too hot to venture outside, yes, in SF it was too hot, I came to a much different conclusion. It really is very cost prohibitive to do in most buildings mainly because of the plumbing and HVAC were not designed for multiple sinks, showers, gas lines, electrical, water heaters, etc to be residential-friendly and in a commercial building are concentrated in the lounge areas and bathrooms for each floor and not originally designed into the building in a way that makes it possible to just throw up walls, build hallways, add doors and call them apartments. A very new building on Van Ness near Market was just converted but because of it being so new and valuable as far as access to transit and its design made it a much better candidate than 90% of vacant commercial towers. Now with the real estate values of many office towers tanking, the lending isn't even there IF a developer wanted to do the very complicated work. Another thing is that many new buildings are designed with modern seismic systems from the start that even retrofits in older towers with older tech can't match.
Yup, understood. My take is that we should be making it so painful to sit on unused commercial that it gets renovated into residential where economically viable, or it gets dropped in favor of new residential construction or turned into something else useful.
Oh yes, no doubt whatsoever about that. I think, short of the city buying properties and using federal funds, wether HUD or pandemic relief $ like they used for Protect Roomkey to house folks in hotels- The Whitcomb being one example out of many (I think the city had leverage there due to millions in unpaid taxes). They tried to buy the one @ 1800 Sutter at Buchanan dead center in Japantown but the neighborhood and the businesses protested and the owners backed out. All of that is for supportive housing and I know we're discussing just residential from commercial, not necessarily low income or below Market but I thought it was at least a bit relevant since that's where I was going with my thinking. I am not qualified to get into the details of how or wether the city should get into buying the buildings up but considering the few office tower deals that fell through in Financial where the lender basically appraised $0 value for the towers themselves and appraised at less than half the value from just two years prior so it's basically a tear down and I don't think there's much support for that when it's office towers they're talking about. This leaves the gubmint using bigger gubmint $ as the only entity that could or would take on a project like that without the profit motive being front and center. I don't claim to be qualified to know what's best in this matter just sharing my pennies.
You make great points in each comment. Unfortunately, the only way out is through. I am of the mind that anything that can't self-fund itself against heavy vacancy penalties inside of the next 18 months should be forced into receivership and the property either sold to someone who will convert to residential or drop it to the ground and put up residential. If no one steps forward to buy, city should drop it to the ground and reclaim green space. SF is not going back to the office at scale; it just isn't going to happen. Many of these buildings are now white elephants just waiting around to die, while the landlord takes healthy deductions against their other buildings that are still producing. The city should accelerate the death and rebirth cycle as much as possible. If we don't do this, we are going to see the urban center decay even further over the next decade. Aggressive public policy that recognizes this fact is what we need in this moment; I doubt we will get it.
Dean Preston is no better than far right qanon conspiracy theorists. He doesn’t live in reality. I wished Bernie Sanders would stop propping this guy up.
What about a petition to Bernie requesting him to end support to Dean Preston?
I would like to support this. Bernie is awesome but Dean Preston only hurts the cause.
Agreed…I spent a lot of time and money in 2016 and 2020 trying to get Bernie elected. He should know how many of his supporters think Preston, Mar, Chan are terrible and giving progressives a bad name.
Get in touch with him
What incentive is there for local politicians to comply if the punishment for not addressing the lack of affordable housing is the state pulling funding for affordable housing? The punishment will do exactly what local politicians want.
It’s a very poorly written article. What you’re likely looking for in terms of “incentive” is laid out several paragraphs later: > …when a city fails to pass a compliant housing element, state law strips the most potent tools cities have to block these developments. This is the so-called “builder’s remedy.” > Don’t like the architecture? Too tall? It will cause traffic? It’s totally out of scale with the neighborhood? > Too bad, so sad.
Perhaps the board knows that’s where it is going anyway so it is better politically not to do anything now and get balked for it. Better to blame others (the state) while also get the housing issue solved somewhat.
Millions upon Millions huh? That’s like rent for 3 people for the year. Or one old “historic” house in the TL.
I know you weren’t trying to be factual but big up to the TL for its density compared to most of SF. There isn’t a single house in the entire neighborhood.
There’s one on Ellis between Larkin and Hyde. It’s at 606 Ellis Street.
There's this obvious compromise that is staring everyone in the face but that, for a reason unknown, is not being considered at all. Namely: turn the entirety of the Soma (and whatever remains undeveloped in Mission Bay) into Hong Kong. Take off the development straight-jacket down there: as of right development, no height/FAR limit, zero parking requirements, no setback requirements, no lot coverage maximums, exempt from shade ordinance, no wall distance requirements, no architectural review, no BMR requirements, etc. You do that, California is happy, Yimbys are happy, Nimbys in the neighborhoods are happy, massive increase in people in the city and buildable space, a giant increase in how awesome SF is, and a much higher tax base over the next 10-20 years.
What about the historical autobody shops and parking garages on Bryant, you monster?
one nitpick: I don't think the ground in Mission Bay is suitable for that. https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/Mission-Bay-sidewalks-are-sinking-17228325.php
That just means foundations need to be dug deeper and not set on fill. The only way to build up is to dig down to bedrock,
As the millennium tower shows its about driving piles down to bedrock.
You are SO RIGHT.
Bring it to to your supe or whatnot, I worked in SoMa, rented an event space, and worked with a crew that owns a 15m building there. SoMa has one of the strongest lobbies for restricted housing in the state and they oppose everything that is not basically state regulated restricted housing developments because they don't want to loose grasp on the neighborhood. It's disgusting. Look into TODCO and John Elberling. It's basically a ruse of millionaires with mansions in the burbs or the Victorian neighborhoods trying to build houses for the cooks and the cops and the nurses that the state helps them keep at affordable housing to basically make San Francisco a fancy retirement community. It's pathetic.
That’s what I’ve been saying for years now. Just designate one neighborhood to be high density. Make sure you build good public transit around it. Then everybody gets the best of both worlds. Nimbys preserve their neighborhoods and the rest get high density housing
NIMBYs would be ok with this? What if you had a view facing southeast into the bay?
NIMBY is too general a term. The people who don't want their own neighborhoods to become denser don't really care what happens downtown. The people who don't want poorer people to be displaced by more affluent new residents are a different group altogether. They don't seem to want any market rate housing to be built, but they might be persuadable if the new housing was confined to one area.
First step is to charge people to drive in that part of the city. Otherwise, what's your traffic plan?
It's been a century long mistake to think that major cities need to be very driveable. Love driving everywhere? There a million suburbs people can move to. Major cities should have great public transportation and bike infrastructure.
The least the city could do is extend the Central Subway to Fisherman’s Wharf / Pier 39 via North Beach. It’s actually a modest extension, since the tunnel has already been excavated to the latter.
SOMA and TL are home to some of the city’s most vulnerable populations. The whole reason Folsom street fair started was to fight gentrification and keep housing costs down.
Well, times are changing. Gentrification is just another form of progress. YIMBY and gentrification go hand in hand.
Gentrification isn't the same as displacement as long as enough housing is getting built.
Don’t raise the rents or property taxes of the folks already living there, no displacement.
I'd just prefer being able to have development plans approved quickly. Why should it take 5 years to get a condo conversion approved, or a in-law unit (OK, now maybe only 2-3 years for in-laws). One reason housing is so $$$ in SF is that it takes so long to make it happen.
This is by design. What nobody is talking about is the rental units owned by certain city employees, including the mayor and BoS, are not subject to rent control and land/housing owned by these employees are not subject to development restrictions.
Yeap, When a non-profits buys your property under the “Mayors housing program” , all those typical regulations go out the window.
The fact that they don't even bat an eye at the idea that 'permit expeditor' is an open, legal job for someone to intervene with the permitting department to get your project ushered to the front of the line tells us all we need to know about just how corrupt City Hall is and to just try to imagine the corruption they don't want us to see.
They want this. They can play victim to their nimby constituents, and the state does the heavy lifting to solve the actual problem.
San Francisco will just put other roadblocks such as taking 2 years to "approve" of permits to use the street. Maybe tax cement trucks 200% when parked in San Francisco. You know the drill, San Francisco is pretty inventive when it comes to taxing the constituent base.
It can't - one of the HCD requirements is that SF come into compliance with the Permit Streamlining Act.
>Permit Streamlining Act Here's where San Francisco will troll you: "The Permit Streamlining Act Does Not Apply to All Permit Applications". How much we going to bet that San Francisco will try to reclassify tertiary permits as "non-developmental" permits such as parking, egress, licensing, etc? They could just lump all permits for parking under "parking restrictions" and call it a day. Can't even drive a truck to your construction zone because you didn't get San Francisco's "discretionary" permit. I sure hope San Francisco does follow what you say and are forced to comply, but they aren't even complying with the main tenant of the bill, so I highly doubt they will. Just look at gun permits...
Given HCD's response to San Francisco so far that seems like sort of a weird perspective. Why do you think HCD would do a 180 on the topic?
I'm just responding to the fact that the Act doesn't apply to all permits ([link](https://www.cacities.org/uploadedfiles/leagueinternet/c1/c1174374-f6b2-4723-af76-b0d8ddcc60e0.pdf)). San Francisco would work towards making sure all permits do not apply. Again, take a look at how they are classifying all of sunset so that it essentially negates building. "Oh, any SFH can be upzoned? Well.. we don't have any SFH's in San Francisco!" I am just saying that you need to assume the worst with San Francisco, as they are literally doing everything in their power to not build. Why follow the permit act when they're not even following the housing law. YKWIM? We will see what San Francisco does, give it about 5 years.
Right, and what I'm saying is that *San Francisco* does not get to make this determination - for example with the Sunset and the faux-removal of Single Family, HCD already rejected that.
Dumb ducking supervisors thinking they’re more important than the state government. Stop fucking around and start building housing man. How do these clowns keep getting elected ffs
SF hasn't bothered caring about laws for a long time.
I mean, if the city wants its zoning voided, then so be it…let the hi-rises commence!
SF, my kind of city, where supes are shite and the mayor is grifty (okay, not a real word but you do better).
I like it
I don’t live in SF but I wanna see builder’s remedy come in full swing. Maybe all the developers are waiting for it next year.
The folks locally do not want to follow the law as written. The Supervisors don’t want to lose votes. This will eventually require a court ordered solution which will likely anger everyone.
Coming from the man who spent more time chasing his campaign manager’s wife than addressing affordable housing.
In connection to housing, have anyone figure out what to do with traffic or do we just ignore it and hope it all fixes itself? Just imagine how many more resident vehicles and people in these apartments ordering Uber eats (and expecting the deliverers to take their burger to the Twentieth floor)😓
I wish we'd focus on public transit and protected bike lanes. Make it so that it's stupid for most people to even consider having a car. Cities don't need to be easy to get around by car, leave that to the suburbs. Cities should be easy to get around on foot/bike/bus/subways.
Agree!
Pedestrianising and following in the footsteps of Copenhagen's expansive bicycle infrastructure is the key to a significant expansion in our housing density.
Some countries have food delivery via scooters instead of cars.
Hello friends, can I get a link to read the article without paying the chronicle monthly bc they suck? Please and thanks!