The proposed legislative moratorium on market-rate housing development in San Francisco’s Mission District failed to be adopted by San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors last night, with seven of the eleven Supervisors voting in favor but nine votes needed to pass the emergency ordinance.
Supervisors Christensen, Farrell, Tang and Wiener voted against the measure.
The proposed ballot measure initiative to establish a market-rate housing moratorium in the Mission remains in play.
Thank god.
Wait, 7 of 11 said yes? That’s nearly as disturbing as having it pass.
Wait till November.
Where it goes down in flames like prop G.
I don’t think it’s going to go down in flames. The city is getting different people coming in. Who else can afford $4225 a month for a one-bedroom now? Don’t count your chickens before they hatch. The city is skewing much more center, even amongst renters now.
Yep. Can’t wait. The mission needs to be saved. Sad day for the natives and long term tenants of the mission. Slowly, this neighborhood is being overtaken by top salary earners.
FWIW, I am a native, see my sign-in name & I’m against the moratorium.
Absolutely pathetic and infuriating. I’m a liberal person, but I’m very challenged to find any compassion for the “priced-out” classes when they keep electing these reactionary [people] to public office.
I have tons of sympathy for the priced out classes whether misguided or not. It is a Bay Area wide issue and most have nothing to do with Campos or a housing moratorium in one neighborhood.
I’d argue most of the anti-growth movements across the Bay Area over the preceding decades was lead by white middle class people
And you’d be completely correct. And most of the current anti-growth movement is led by white middle class people. Its just that its all in the suburbs and blogs like Socketsite don’t really cover the ‘burbs unless its some giant splashy project. San Francisco is having a housing crisis primarily because its surrounded by low-rise suburbs that don’t let any development happen of any scale. The rate of housing production in the ‘burbs is even worse than in SF.
@GoBlueInSF and @Zig I’m glad to see even a few people mentioning this. All over the web you read terribly simplistic assessments of the current housing situation in SF, with a seemingly never-ending repetition of the same talking points surrounding Econ 101, supply & demand, and why anyone who dare not support non-stop buildings and high rises all over the city is just a misguided fool.
This is a *region wide problem* that has been cooking for more than a generation, and has finally blossomed into the clusterfuck we’re all witnessing today. One could even draw the conclusion that the resistance to BART spreading across the peninsula, which some may argue was rooted in racism, but we we can probably safely conclude it had just as much to do with anti-urbanism, has lead us to this very moment in time.
We felt the sting in the 90’s during the last boom, and it’s really extra-painful now due to the very same resistance in the low-density cities just south of us: they’ll happily host the new jobs, but they’ll be damned if they makes room for the new workers to have the luxury of living close to where they work. They won’t allow expanded public transit, but hey!–Google, Facebook, Yahoo, EA, etc. will happily ship their workers in from 30+ miles away. And the companies, god bless ’em (in this case, at least), they just want to do their company-thang and get the best talent they can to create their products and make their money. I honestly don’t think any of the above-mentioned companies care if their employees live in SF or in the South Bay/Peninsula—but those cities sure do.
I hate to sound cynical, but I don’t think there’s a solution coming anytime soon, save some cataclysmic event like a sharp downturn in the economy, or some sort of natural disaster that spooks a bunch of people.
I don’t recall heated debates about development in the ‘burbs. Is it more difficult to develop and build in the ‘burbs than in the City?
Jack
in many suburbs it is more a zoning issue where SFH and high parking requirements just precluded anything by single family homes and in areas I am familiar on the Peninsula that were built out this meant nothing much could really be built for decades. Things are changing now though and Redwood City and San Mateo in particular are building a lot of relatively high density housing around transit. Other cities like Menlo Park don’t seem to be doing as much to me
Yep. Terrifying. I wish I was able to vote.
The (pro) Moratorium Folks represent our own “progressive/leftist” version of the nation’s “rightwing” Tea Party.
They are both examples of a logic-challenged, reactionary and emotion-driven mindset.
They are both the unwitting handmaidens of the rich and powerful.
In the case of the Tea Party, they are working against their own self-interest by supporting the economic agenda of the laissez-faire capitalists such as the Koch brothers and their ilk.
In the case of the Moratorium Folks, they are working against their own self-interest by supporting a halt to housing construction. Ironically, this will only play into the hands of the Landlords and the Property Owners as it will make existing housing stock more scarce, hence making it more valuable and more expensive.
Just as the Tea Party denies the scientific consensus on Global Warming in spite of overwhelming evidence, the Moratorium Folks deny the economic reality of supply and demand in spite of overwhelming evidence.
Both are problems caused by decades of bad policy.
In the case of Global Warning it has been wasteful and polluting lifestyles.
In the case of SF’s Housing Crisis, it has been the incrementally well-intentioned –but cumulatively disastrous — anti-housing policies of the past 40 years that have made it increasingly expensive and difficult to create housing in this city.
This is a problem many years in the making and — given how long it takes to create housing — it will take many years, if not decades of focused effort to solve.
The only way to solve a housing shortage is to create more housing — for everyone.
Delay will only exacerbate the problem.
We need to come together to figure out how we can building more housing, more efficiently and more economically — as fast as we can.
Whoa now, don’t you think God intended for this to happen? I know it seems like there is a logical reason, but maybe God set it up so we would come to a logical theory… like he intelligently designed this crisis. Just think about what our Founding Fathers would do in this situation…
+1
This is such a perfect analogy. I’ve always thought these NIMBY folks were super conservative- they don’t want anything to change. I think they’ve swung so far left they’ve come back around on the right.
Too far east is west
This is the best comment I’ve seen on this site in a long time. Sad but true that both groups are fighting against their own self-interest, and to the detriment of all of us.
I think a more apt would be to Jerry Falwell types – – self-righteous people do not consider social welfare.
As I understand, the tea party represents ideological extremes in terms of taxation, government intervention, constitutional interpretation, etc. this has absolutely nothing to do with global warming. Moreover, it is not clear that all tea partiers are dependent on government welfare. If that were the case, they would indeed be hypocrites. However, it is more likely that they are representatives from the working-class, middle-class, and perhaps even some upper-class. In this case, supporting supply-side policies is perfectly reasonable. If you haven’t noticed, the past seven years – which I would characterize as indiscriminate Keynesian with a healthy dose of anti-business – has produced very poor economic performance.
Tea party Republicans are now the only group of Americans who think the Earth is not warming, according to a 2013 poll by the Pew Research Center, with just 25 percent of tea party Republicans saying global warming is happening. By contrast, 67 percent of all Americans say there is evidence climate change is underway, including 61 percent of non-tea party Republicans.
While I doubt that the tea party came together based on global warming opinions, I will indulge your post.
It sounds like the question was not very well posed. For example, everyone knows that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. If people don’t know this, that would be sad and embarrassing. However, let’s contrast this against the IPCC which has been claiming climate sensitivity of at least 3°C – – a number that is a highly improbable in the face of empirical evidence. Also, consider that we have politicians, our president included, who claim that CO2 results in increased droughts and hurricanes. The latter category is just as embarrassing and even more dangerous in terms of the potential economic damage their policies would yield. The earth has not warmed in 18 years (via satellite measurements, not the land-based measurements cited by journalists). Climate sensitivity is probably something much closer to 0.5°C, and it is not clear that an increase in 0.5° C would be harmful. Moreover, the half-life of a CO2 molecule in our atmosphere is just a few years, so elevated CO2 levels can easily be reversed.
It is fascinating to me how my liberal friends and colleagues preach the doomsday global warming scenario, but they still drive to work, take vacations, drink bottled water, etc.
I also doubt the tea party came together originally based on global warming opinions, but it sure does have a concentration of climate change deniers now.
You are wrong about the satellite data wrt to global warming. I read the published science, not the news reports, and used to work in the GSFC climate group. Anthropogenic global warming is settled science. So is ocean acidification due to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide.
We may not share friends, but people that know the science don’t preach, they teach. When people let their politics get in the way of understanding, or pretend to understand what they don’t, they just embarrass themselves.
“you’re wrong” “settled science” – – interesting you cannot make a substantial argument against satellite data. Just this week, we see another paper (science magazine) with pseudo-scientists manipulating land-based data.
I’m sorry, I know NASA has a lot of smart people working there, but after the reign of James Hansen, climate scientists working there can hardly be thought of as professional and objective.
I agree with you that CO2 levels are rising, that acidification is occurring, and increased CO2 can only have a nonzero positive impact on global temperatures. But I’ve not seen any compelling work to suggest that climate sensitivity might be anything more than 0.5°C. Indeed, climate scientists cannot even predict historical data.
The satellite data does show global warming. I don’t need to make an argument about it, a world-class team of experts already has, headed by Thomas Karl, director of the NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center, who is a real scientist not a “pseudo-scientist” or a non-scientist like Monckton.
Not sure why you think the comment section of a real-estate blog is a good place to display your difficulties understanding the science of global warming, but as long as the editor lets you go on…
Versus the scintillating performance under Republican trickle-down economics? Or Austerity? Austerity has worked so well wherever it is imposed under Disaster Capitalism.
Even granted your assumption that Obama’s policies are “liberal” in any way rather than a slightly more tepid version of W’s. After all, W started the whole TARP ball rolling, so it is rather disingenuous to make a statement like this.
Actually, even Bush had a better economic record in terms of employment levels, and he was burdened with two major financial crises (2001, 2007). Generally, the sharper the recession, the greater the rebound, which is why last six years look so poor.
But I agree with you, there are some common policies between Bush and Obama, in cases where Bush was an economic populist and Obama more supply side (e.g. free-trade). Reasonable people can disagree about economic policies. But Kraus is indulging in this ridiculous notion that anyone in the tea party is harming themselves by voting Republican. There is a similar canard about Southerners harming themselves in the same manner.
US Jobs created during time in office per BLS (non-farm, seasonally adjusted) :
1.3 million, George W Bush
7.4 million, Barack Obama
And Obama still has another 8 months.
make that Obama still has another 20 months. George W has the worst job-creation record since the Labor Department started keeping payroll records in 1939, as reported by the WSJ.
The U–6 unemployment rate indicates how, the Bush years showed pretty robust employment levels. Keep in mind he took office after an impressive expansion, and himself inherited two different financial crises. The past 6 1/2 years have seen improvement from the sharp recession, but the level of people leaving the labor force is disconcerting. Moreover, bear in mind, we have also racked up 7 trillion in debt, and were still at 10% unemployment.
In other words, no, I do not agree that jobs created is the best measure.
the level of people leaving the work force is due to the most populous generation in the history of the western world, the baby boomers, reaching retirement age. please do not come around here with that one. it is a tea party talking point.
@ SOMA resident –
Excuse me! W didn’t inherit the SECOND recession – he facilitated it; then threw a tarp over the whole thing to cover it up. Good news, no one went to jail, unlike during Papy’s recession.
Good point, the aging population is a factor, but it is a small one nonetheless. This article cites several studies by economists working at various Fed reserve branches. Summary: the causes are cyclical and not structural.
two editorials? so?
TBH @Kraus, the TEA Party originally stood for Taxed Enough Already. And frankly I am T.E.A. but it was taken over by the crazy social conservatives who do not represent those of us in California. The Kochs are huge supporters of libertarian philosophies, and the arts. Both of which I support & many in tech do too, although many in tech are not big arts supporters, sadly.
We could always buil a whole bunch of cheap concrete towers to mitigate the crisis. Are there any soviet architects still alive? 😛
Stanley Saitowitz is alive and well.
I joke. I love modern brutalist architecture. We need more of this.
Some brutalism can be quite interesting. But cities that pour the concrete are usually pretty bad at maintaining it. But every new wave of genius architects thinks they have to come up with a new better concept and more often than not fails miserably.
I love University campuses, at least the rich ones. Half the modern architecture there is horrible, but even then, it’s interesting.
The pro crowd last night really came off badly. Bald faced racism was truly on display.
Racism from the crowd? That’s nothing. Eric Mar is calling it “ethnic cleansing.”
When does Mar get booted off the board? He’s out of touch with his district, out of touch with the way SF is today. And he’s a racist with that remark, especially since tons of Tech are Asians of every stripe.
I have informally spoken to Clement St. merchants and Bank of America bankers who dislike Eric Mar. I told them if Mar gets any more support, I will take my business elsewhere.
What the hell is going on with the Alexandria Theater and the supposed housing development. Nothing! Mar has done nothing for the vacant storefronts on Geary.
[Editor’s Note: Alexandria Theater Sold, Redevelopment Plans Ramping Up.]
I drove by this place today and no construction is on site. It is coming up on a year anniversary since it was sold (after lengthy argument and debate.)
Asians are not a homogenous group. there are moneyed asians, working class asians, and yes, homeless asians.
Not my point. My point is that he’s saying it’s ethnic cleansing. That’s a misnomer and clearly raising the ante, and putting the race card out there.
The pro moratorium side was all about playing the race card. Did any one else’s jaw drop when the speaker with the fedora and glasses (who by the way voiced his support for Olague) referred to London Breed as a bought and paid for modern day slave?
@bg – figures. I’ve heard this before too. Condi Rice was consistently called a house n-word by the left. Oh please kick out the trustfunder left from this city, the sooner the better. They are racist.
Dear Supervisor Mar (Eric.L.Mar@sfgov.org),
You called the construction of market rate housing in the Mission, “Ethnic Cleansing.”
Ethnic Cleansing is when a group of people identified by their ethnicity are murdered wholesale. Constructing market rate housing is what a functional city does when demand for housing exceeds the supply of housing. Construction of homes and ethnic cleansing are different things.
Love,
soccermom
That’s a nice letter. I’ll send this one:
Dear Supervisor Mar,
Thank you so much for informing us that Ethnic Cleansing is taking place in our City. I had no idea. Please, let’s call for the appropriate immediate action! –
Ask President Obama to send all branches of the US Military here immediately to intervene.
Request that the UN send a multi-national Peacekeeping force, to patrol the city on a permanent basis, until any and all genocide and/or Ethnic Cleansing is brought under control.
Set up refugee camps for those poor souls who are fleeing for their lives, and get the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders here post haste. Whoever is committing this Ethnic Cleansing no doubt will do all they can to cut off the victims from outside help, leading to mass starvation and no access to water, sanitation, and medicine.
This is a National Crisis, and demands the full response of the National and International community. We failed in Rwanda – please, so not let such a tragedy happen again – especially in our own great City!
Please keep us informed with hourly press conferences to let us know all steps that are being taken to halt this Crime Against Humanity!!!!
Sincerely,
EcceMorons (that’s Latin – look it up if you need the meaning of the term – and yes, I’m beholding YOU)
that’s genocide and Mar stole the dismantling of a neighborhood community as “ethnic cleansing” analogy from me.
Don’t question soccermom. She is smart. Ethnic cleansing is indeed a euphemism for genocide, and her definition is spot on. I believe the term was first used by those leading the genocide of Muslims by Serbs in the former Yugoslavia in the early ’90s.
Well, you should report that theft immediately. I’d love to read that police report:
Item stolen: One truly insane analogy.
Estimated value: One million laughs.
As amply blatantly demonstrated by so many comments here, racial animus (covered over by “more acceptable” greed) is a major factor in the drive to destroy a community and remove a people as “unqualified” to continue living in their homes. That, to me, qualifies as ethnic cleansing and is the civic equivalent to genocide.
As a person with Jewish ancestry, some of whom didn’t make it out alive, I find “ethnic cleansing” a truly despicable term. Economics are not ethnic cleansing, no matter how much you use the term.
And you’re both wrong as to the meaning and use of the term “ethnic cleansing” and, in particular, in the Yugoslavian conflict. While there were certainly directed mass murders including one especially notorious Serbian atrocity, it never rose to the level of “genocide.”
The ethnic cleansing campaign primarily involved the geographic removal of peoples from lands to be repopulated by others.
Orland,
I sometimes agree with you but find your language despicable. As a member of the race where most racism is targeted in Is, to say building market rate housing as a form of ethnic cleansing is just disgusting. People have been killed, burned, hung, humiliated, fed with drugs, lies, chains. This is still happening as we see in the news.
To compare the torture put on many classes and races of people to building of market rate housing in a supply restricted city should give officers the right to straight jacket you and send you immediately to the looney bin.
As far as Eric mar goes, he should be fired for shouting fire in a crowded theatre. There is a large need for a new psychiatric hospital in San Francisco for people who believe this stuff. And it needs to be at least 12 floors so we don’t under build for future nuts like you and mar
Sorry for your overly emotional miscomprehension of what’s actually at stake.
Ethnic cleansing merely means the removal of a people from place. It’s only the effect that matters.
It might be accomplished by “murder, torture, burning, hanging.” Hell, it might even be done by legislation. Or, in the case of today’s Mission, by the focus upon building only new housing beyond the means of the current residents with all the accompanying negative effects of gentrification that entails.
In the end, the result ‘s the same and that’s what matters.
the result is not the same. obviously you’ve lived an extremely privileged life if you consider building of market rate housing in the Mission to be on the same level as ethnic and racial atrocities including those still happening in US. the only racism that’s happening in this case is the racism expressed by calle 24 and Campos that only latinos should live in the mission. SF is supposed to be pro Diversity.
Eric mar is a poor excuse for a public servant. I am utterly ashamed he is my supervisor. My border collie would be 5x as effective as him, and is certainly more in touch with reality
We need to fix the system, the system is imbalanced and the supervisors ignored the public and community organizations united to see change.
Therefore the ballot box is the next step. Plaza 16 and Campos did the correct thing, and ask for a pause to re-think the process. A simple request for a pause, was not seen by 4 supervisors as fair.
They will feel the wrath of the public when election time comes around.
Aaron, considering only Campos is elected by Mission voters, and most residents in the city who do not live in the Mission only care about what happens in their own neighborhoods, your comments about how anyone will “feel the wrath” is absolutely laughable. Now, had Campos been against the measure, yes, perhaps he would have something to worry about from crazy Mission voters (though, I wonder how many people who stamp around actually bother to vote, and even if they do, whether they are simply the loudest, but not necessarily representative of the whole neighborhood). However, the 4 supervisors who voted against the ordinance are going to do just fine.
Would you please explain to me how Mark Farrell will “feel the wrath” of his Pac Heights/Marina constituents for voting “no” on this? I could use a good laugh.
As a resident of District 3 I can tell you that the bloom is certainly off the rose with respect to Julie Christensen and her vote on this will not help her here (particularly as she spent most of the hearing web-surfing while speakers stood about 5 feet away from her and it was the only image on TV during the bulk of the hearing….you’d think some aide would have clued her in re the optics).
Much of her support was related to her past efforts concerning the new library and playground, but the increasing perception is that she is completely in Ed Lee’s pocket. For better or worse, Aaron Peskin’s pitch is that he is for an “affordable city.” While Mark Farrell’s seat is certainly safe, the District 3 race is going to be very heated…regardless of how much money Ron Conway gives to Christensen.
I asked about Mark Farrell, not Julie Christensen.
I will support Julie instead of letting Chinatown kill itself off like North Beach. The SF Examiner had an article about how the community is hoping to revitalize its image as a cheap tourist neighborhood by putting a mural on the pedestrian bridge between Portsmouth Square and the Hilton. Lipstick on a pig. The real problem is no developer or serious investor wants to do business in Chinatown.
“Chinatown as a cheap tourist neighborhood”
I don't travel often nor broadly, but I've never encountered a Chinatown that is not a cheap tourist neighborhood. It's often Chinese bakeries/restaurants, shops with cheap trinkets, and laundry hung out to dry. If SF/NY Chinatown are the oldest in the Americas and still looking like what I'm describing, I don't think it's a bad idea to "kill itself off".
…and Wiener is termed out in 2 years.
Wiener is termed out in January 2019, so 3.5 years.
Crybabies who were the new thing 40 years ago are afraid of the new thing of 2015.
“You are obsolete”. Time to revisit Kid Charlemagne.
Many years ago there was a national debate on “a moment of silence” before a football game. We all knew it was prayer in disguise. A pause in construction, so we can think about things? That’s just not how it works. Either it’s an attempt to prove the political clout for an extended ban or you should be offended because your politicians are pandering to you with 45 days, knowing it means nothing in the long run.
Either way, it’s just idiotic policy.
“They will feel the wrath of the public when election time comes around.”
Damn straight. I can’t wait to vote against Eric Mar.
+1
Now if only there were someone running against him…
The current system is has been broken for 30-40 years. Seems more of the sane
Rethink the process? Certainly. There are decades preceding this to rethink, and decades after. So let’s do the rethinking now. What does it has to do with a moratorium? It is not like in 45 days you can figure out things you couldn’t figure out in a decade. This is more like Campos desperately want to do something and show that he is not entirely powerless in this issue.
Wait, if the problem can be solved in 45 days then why are you going to the ballot box? Won’t you have solved it by then?
Up next: “At the board of supervisors’ meeting Tuesday, Campos introduced legislation that calls for a moratorium on combining retail spaces on 24th Street. The proposal would prohibit retailers and restaurants from merging adjacent spaces that would exceed 799 square feet.”
A “pause” is not a policy. Is Campos’s aim a return to large-scale construction of public housing, aka, the projects? I doubt these would be welcomed in the Mission or anywhere else once this goal is made plain.
Moratorium is not a solution. Here’s a (possible) solution:
1. Eliminate rent control
2. Set up a rental assistance program permanently funded by x% of city tax revenue that provides help to whoever we decide to help — my votes would be for low income: elderly, parents of young kids, teachers, nurses, police, fireman, etc.
3. Rental assistance program should also encourage home ownership, e.g. Pays the mortgage insurance for first time buyers with as little as 3.5% down
4. Up zone the entire city by 10 feet and one unit, e.g., any 40 foot 2 unit building becomes a 50 foot 3 unit building.
5. Significant up zoning available to developers in transit corridors in exchange for contribution to the rental assistance program.
6. Complete overhaul of the planning and permitting functions of SF city government. All of it. Start from scratch. One of the main reasons housing is so expensive in SF is that it takes years to get something approved; even things that are 100% within existing zoning.
You could eliminate rent control with a minimum of screaming if you just allowed vacant units to permanently go out of control. I don’t like the idea of another welfare program we can’t afford, however. But I agree with you that zoning changes are essential, as well as streamlining the planning and permitting functions.
Elimination rent control would be politically … difficult, to put it mildly. My concept is to replace it with a publicly funded rental assistance program. If we as a society want to provide subsidized housing to certain individuals (which is what rent control is) we should all pay for it, rather than put the burden on certain landlords who happen to get saddled with lifetime tenants.
Rent control does not come up often enough in the housing crisis discussion. Phasing out rent control over time would be a step in the right direction for getting the SF market back to affordability. Boston was able to phase out rent control not too long ago.
yes, ending rent control is not mentioned nearly enough in discussions on socketsite. Boston voters voted to keep rent control, but the statewide vote was to end it. That’s why Boston had to eliminate rent control about 20 years ago. The end of rent control contributed to the long term increase in asking rents in Boston, as has been well documented.
SF and Boston are 2 of the top 10 wealthiest cities in the US and both markets are highly constrained on the supply side. So you would expect the rents to be pretty close…
SF’s ZRI for April 2015 – $3,162.
Boston’s ZRI for April 2015 – $2,184.
Not so much. SF is significantly higher than Boston.
SF is much wealthier than Boston. For example, per capita income is about 40% higher. Boston income and poverty rates are more like Oakland than SF. The Boston metro area doesn’t have nearly the geographic barriers that surround SF and breakup the bay area. Neighboring cities like Brookline and Cambridge are much closer to downtown Boston than Daly City and Oakland are to downtown SF. FWIW, Boston had a lot less rental units under rent control than SF does now. The impacts of removing rent control here should be greater than it was in Boston.
Rent control only affects buildings constructed prior to June 1979. All new construction is generally condo-mapped as belts & suspenders since Costa-Hawkins exempts condos from rent control. Also, in California, we do not have rent control – we have vacancy de-control (also via Costa-Hawkins) So for new construction, rent control is never an issue. As such, its elimination will have zero affect on housing production. Only result is that median rents will increase and rent control units will go from housing a poorer social class of people to housing a richer social class of people. This has been well documented when Massachusetts ended rent control statewide 20 years which affected the 3 cities in the state that had vacancy decontrol/rent control – Boston, Cambridge & Brookline. But those are real live data points from a real world example of ending rent control so they don’t count.
You anti-rent control folks have absolutely no idea how SF rent control actually functions on the ground, and how the specifics of rent control in SF actually are quite relevant and critical as to whether RC is a significant factor in SF’s rental crisis (answer: its not)
If you want to find a culprit, look to SF (and the greater Bay Area’s) insanely restrictive zoning – that we have single family zones in SF is insane. And look to statewide law – specifically CEQA – which has transformed NIMBYism into something approaching a constitutional right.
The housing situation is caused by many factors, so singling out any single one as significant is problematic. See the techcrunch article from last year for an exhaustive list.
Rent control does reduce supply of available rental stock by reducing incentives for people to switch homes or leave the area. It holds median rents down by definition as a portion of the market is artificially held down, but the remaining portion of the market is inflated reflecting the reduced supply. It is one of many factors, but it is a factor in the current situation.
Why always with the police and firemen? They have such good PR. Let me tell you a secret. They make a ton, can afford SF but mostly choose not to live there because they are often conservatives and SF isn’t great for most familes. They don’t need help, LOL. Half of SFFD likely lives in Sacranento burbs. You should hear some of them talk about the people who live in SF.
THANK YOU.
The battle is not over yet. I have vested interests in Norman Yee, Eric Mar, and Julie Christensen’s neighborhoods. I will send a nice email to Julie to show her my support. I will harangue all the merchants in Yee’s and Mar’s neighborhoods until they quit supporting these two clowns.
Is there a pdf of Campos’s 13 proposed sites map?
[Editor’s Note: It’s Exhibit 6 in the Policy Analysis Report to which we linked yesterday.]
thank you. my word. the 14th and Harrison cluster looks to be precisely the opposite of what we have learned works here in SF. “Let’s put all the poor folks in a formerly industrial zone next to the freeway” Are you kidding me? Chilling. Campos is a menace.
Plus maybe the not-very-old Best Buy on that site would have something to say about being razed for housing? Or maybe that’s just a subtle jab at the tech industry.
GOOD
Some supporting this know it is flawed in the sense a broader moratorium is needed to really be effective. If it wins by a large enough margin it will be followed by another initiative expanding the moratorium zone. Ideally some in this group would like a city-wide moratorium but realize that won’t fly.
The problem is a housing moratorium is self-defeating. A moratorium for 5 years on new office construction over 50K square feet is needed. Even with that the 4 million square feet of office projects already in the works will keep the union guys employed during those 5 years.
I watched the whole thing. A few notes:
Jane Kim was unaware that Cell Space closed years ago. London Breed was downright ornery with the rowdier “activists,” pausing the proceedings every time they got too lively. But from what I saw no one was escorted out by deputies. Not sure why Julie Christensen voted no. Since she’s up against Peskin logic would dictate she vote yes and thereby maybe peel away a few of the Peskinites. Poor Scott Wiener did get the short end of the stick in terms of public commentary, and spent most of it looking at anything but the reddened faces of the public crowd.
There was one girl who went to town with mostly unrepeatable and pretty crazy ranting, but she got the big laugh of the night when she tongue wagged at “all the drunk white people ruining Dolores Park.”
All in all a throwback to 2001 even with a few of the same players from Activism, Inc.
Excellent news! let’s continue building in the Mission and elsewhere.
When Hillary comes into town for her campaigning and fundraiser, I would love to see which supervisors get to stand next to her for the photo-op and which ones quietly advised to stay the heck away.
Obama was never photographed with Gavin Newsom and Obama shot down Ron Dellum’s bid to become a U.S. Ambassador to some African country. Also. what happened to Van Jones?
And now a considerable majority (including Obama) consider Newsom a prophet.
People just don’t take a holistic view of this issue. The region has a huge under supply of transit accessible high density housing that people want. Even most of SF city is zoned SFH or two story. Everything about SF is structured like a small city.
To fix the problem someone’s view is going to get blocked, some people have to move beyond the 50’s idea of a suburb, traffic will get worse and land use practices have to get better so people can use it more. Not sure we have the will to fix this
This is a symbolic issue on both sides that makes almost no difference either way. We aren’t building that much housing in the Mission and what is being build is mostly housing very small households
Meanwhile in Vallejo, just listed for $199K.
Suppose $20K Down, 180K 30year fixed at 3.5% = $808 per month. And you own the house and have a yard.
Could it be we don’t have an affordability problem [but rather] that we have an “I don’t want to have to commute” problem?
Yes, and we have a “I am special. Without me-me-me-me San Francisco will lose its soul” syndrome, aka – I want to keep getting the free lunch.
We have an “I don’t want to live in Vallejo” problem.
There’s no parking in SF and other than oakland, there aren’t many cool/fun urban cores. Public transit is horrible and BART is filled and stops service just when things are getting going. And there are very few apartments within walking distance of a BART station anyway. Basically, we lack every type of infrastructure that makes not living in a city tolerable, if you don’t actually live in the city.
Vallejo is 35 miles and two bridges away from SF
1.5 hours on the ferry
It’s an hour ferry ride.
I just guessed at the commute time
Sending working class people all the way to Vallejo is pretty dumb. That is far from SF
35 miles away is not that far on BART
And a 54 minute BART ride gets you a 4/1.5 in Pittsburg for 229k.
So likely a 1.5 hour commute each way considering the commute to BART and the the ride to downtown SF assuming our commuter works there. Might work for some but that is pretty misreble and expensive commute
Plenty of other BART-friendly affordable places in Martinez, Concord, Richmond, etc. Hundreds of my very smart and hard-working colleagues here commute from these places every day. They live there because (a) they prefer it and/or (b) they simply can afford it more than SF or Marin. That is a decision 99% of the world makes.
You seem incapable of understanding that we’re referring to people who have made the decision to live in SF and wish only to continue to do so. It is positively daft to question and deride as so many fools here do their decision to seek to enlist their democratically-elected government to pursue policies which assist them in that very basic desire to live in the community they have created.
the community they have created
There are many versions of SF. The merchant on Clement might not have much in common with the blue collar lifer tenant in the Mission or the SOMA slicker, yet all are apart of SF.
Who is to decide who deserves SF and who doesn’t? A committee of people like you? SF has always been populated through opportunity and chance. People who BUILT the SF you love today were doing it because they wanted to take land, add homes, and collect rent or make a profit. After that the people come and go.
The recent protectionist trend is a subdued attempt at making one version of SF the official SF. It is a deeply political choice. Newcomers that you do not like tend to be more moderate and more capitalistic. Accepting them means you’d have to accept that they have their say in the way the City does its business. And you obviously do not like to share.
The issue really is we don’t have enough near multi family housing not sprawling SFHs. This is pretty well covered
There is no good reason to stubbornly pursue a course that will inevitably result in the uprooting of an established, self-identifying community which does not agree to such fate.
The obvious reason so many here insist upon working such harm is their personal gain. Fine. But expect resistance and hope that it remains only political. Inasmuch as we do have a democratic system (flawed as it is), there is a very good chance that the beleaguered community in question will obtain some relief with the ultimate results any body’s guess and likely to be substantially affected by forces and events the antagonists aren’t even contemplating now.
As a human being, I have great sympathy for the fears and goals of the so-called Calle 24 movement.
As a San Franciscan with no interest in the real estate industry other than as an SFH owner, I’m primarily concerned about the good of the City.
I think this conflict is silly and completely unnecessary from the standpoint of the City as a whole. There is absolutely no reason we cannot fashion a course that will allow for positive change including pursuit of economic opportunity without sacrificing the present community which, in addition to having an absolute right to continue to exist, is also a wonderful asset to the City as a whole.
BART in Vallejo?
Oh the tough life of the commuter. Welcome to the human race.
Pushing people to the exurbs is not good public policy
I wouldn’t suggest sending anyone anywhere. You chose to move to San Mateo. It was a better choice for your family. You probably got more space and a peaceful neighborhood. You could have gotten more space and a peaceful neighborhood in Pac Heights, too right? But it turns out money is an object. You made the best choice for your family given your budget. Why shouldn’t people choose places to live that fit their financial circumstances?
Right Soccermom, making good financial decisions instead of bleating about how people are entitled to live in city x is what I completely agree with.
what does good financial decisions have to do with awful planning and public policy.
I’m relatively well off and have lots of choices. This is a general public policy discussion.
My mother took the subway for 30 years of her life. It took 45 minutes. She never bitched about the distance one bit. People need to stop feeling entitled and move out — they have OPTIONS.
NYC and the Bay Area are not the same. We would be golden if there was a lot of affordable housing with a door to door 45 minute commute to downtown.
“45 minute commute” <== therein lies the issue. Is 45-minute commute the bar such that anything above it denotes bad public policy?
san bruno, South SF, Balboa park, colma are all much cheaper and less than 25 BART commute.
same for oakland, san leadnro. el cerrito just a little further on BART and also much cheaper.
the mission is one of the most expensive neighborhoods in Bay Area. We should nit be subsidizing on a large scale for that.
Correct.
Can’t wait until this passes and the Mission really starts gentrifying. Should direct developers’ interest to new opportunities like Geary past Divis and Outer Mission. It will be interesting when they redraw districts to reflect east shift in population. When does that happen next?
Commonsense on the Board of Supervisors used to be as rare as earthquakes around here.
Hopefully with all the new housing int he pipeline prices will start to be more reasonable again……
Hope is not a policy.
Which is why the Mission Moratorium will go down with a thud @Orland.
“hope is not a policy” from the poster who is saying, “maybe the moratorium won’t work but why not give it a shot” ?
good grief are you fake.
Well, that’s a total lie since I have never endorsed the moratorium on that or any other basis.
I’ll be nice — OMG, you are so disingenuous.
I would suggest you go back to “Hope is not a policy,” and re-read this thread. You have to be the only one here lost.
you did say something along those lines, actually. I can find it if you like. Can’t be bothered right now. and 4th Gen I was not talking to you. there is not a reply under every stanza, so my comment was grouped the way it was. that’s why I used a quote.
No, [you] will not find anything of the sort as I still hadn’t decided myself as to the merits of the particular measure before the BOS.
went back and looked. “hope is not a policy” from someone who said things more like, “what else are they supposed to do, other than shout everyone down at policy meetings”
and a direct quote: I think the BMR requirement attached to new development in the Mission should be increased (say to 33%-40% range) with a healthy contribution from the public funds subject of the current bond measure
Yet, “hope is not a policy.” Got it. 33 to 40% you want. Yet “hope is not a policy.” And snide about it.
I guess it’s beyond you to say you simply were incorrect. Good to know.
what SF needs is a creative public/private partnership to increase density and housing stock.
id like to see the city approach building owner with under-utilized spaces and offer to partner with them to add rental housing, they could do something like this:
1- city offers to pay for 100% of the development costs to add units vertically. gets fast tracked through planning and partnered with LOCAL labor and builders.
2- owner can have 2 options after the development a) assume the development costs via city financed lending at very low interest rates in exchange for permanent below market rate units (no qualifying, no lending requirements, etc). -OR- b) buy out the city with a new market rate loan with the restriction that the units must stay on the market at below market rate for 10 years. The units must always remain as rentals and property is exempt from TIC or condo sales, ellis act. etc. AND- all the restrictions are transferable to the new owners etc etc etc.
incentivize property owner to make this a win-win for both. otherwise you just keep making the supply problem worse.
7 supervisors voted for this?? Loony! Scary! Where’s the common sense in SF politics? They want to make it so only lottery winners can live in SF- millionaire lottery winners and poor lottery winners (via the subsidized housing lottery, where less than 1% of applicants get taxpayer funded housing). So glad I moved out- this stresses me out just reading about it.
There is an affordability problem in that for all the job increases in SF recently many are service jobs or mid-level corporate jobs that don’t pay near enough to afford a home in SF. Yes, the tech jobs pay very well but those are a relatively small segment of the SF workforce.
So SF is increasing the number of jobs for people who can’t afford to live here, must commute – thus exacerbating the commute issue too.
I know several electricians who moved to the Bay Area and were lucky to get jobs in SF (SF pays more for electricians than other Bay Area counties). With overtime they are doing quite well but can’t afford to live here and have bought places in Brentwood.
Its a jobs income housing cost imbalance to a significant degree.
This is why SF can’t just continue to create service level and mid-management jobs indefinitely.
This problem will be ameliorated when job growth is shifted to Oakland and Fremont – to name two cities and away from SF.
Spread the job base as much as possible throughout the Bay Area. SF does not have to be the “downtown” anymore. Those days are over.
This will reduce congestion throughout the Bay Area but more importantly improve the quality of life for folks now enduring 1 and 1 & a half commutes in each direction.
Back to my solution. An office construction moratorium in SF. This would quickly, over 5 – 10 years, result in the job redistribution the area needs so badly.
And yet there are enough people to pay market rent and keep it at the current rates (the Comical today has an article on the current $4200/month median rent). This shows the good paying jobs are still pretty much what drives the market-rate rental system.
[Editor’s Note: San Francisco’s Median Rent Is NOT $4,225. Really, It’s Not.]
Also, SF is not the powerhouse you think it is. The BIG driver in the area is still the SV.
Your idea is just plain ridiculous. It’s like you want SF to fail. Ask Detroit what happens when the locals start to get a bit too crazy for the corporate world.
I just called Detroit to ask them. Their phone has been disconnected.
SF office construction moratorium? If this is your best “solution”, go talk to Mountain View, where they’ve added something like 40,000 jobs in the last few years, and about 0 new housing.
And most of those new jobs are taken by people who would prefer to live in SF – and many of them do. Witness Google bus, etc.
You can try to contort the distribution of office space all you want – but you can’t make folks NOT want to live in SF. You’ll just make them commute.
SF can accommodate only so many people. Its already at 800K with over-crowed streets and homeowners in the Avenues and West of Twin Peaks with 2/3 cars per household.
So the folks with service jobs and mid-level management jobs need to get out to make way for the upper income earners? A city of just the wealthy and a relatively few subsidized poor is not healthy.
well, having a lot of wealthy inhabitants is not a negative thing. They’re ready to pay more for things, ask for more services, which all create jobs inside and outside of SF. Higher prices for goods and services translates in higher incomes and increased tax revenue, which then can be used to support the people negatively affected by this change that the city needs (there was a discussion about teachers earlier).
Better that than the slow sclerosis of cities that decided nothing would ever change.
Does anyone know the locations of the 14 parcels Sup. Campos has identified as suitable for affordable housing?
It’s Exhibit 6 in the Policy Analysis Report to which we linked yesterday.
I can understand the sense of urgency. Pretty slim pickings when you consider how potentially unavailable some of those sites would be without the intervention of eminent domain.
The map is not very precise. For example, it shows a site on 23rd between Mission & Capp that is occupied by a Bank of America & a landmarked church.
On a recent KQED Forum about the moratorium, a caller asked Campos why he supported Vida, the development on Mission between 22nd & 21st. Campos sounded like he was unfamiliar with this project.
It is worrisome that city officials can’t find big new developments, or empty lots!
Interesting that it also does not include the site of the now-shuttered former grocery on S Van Ness between 23rd & 24th which was the subject of an item here as potential large market-rate housing development.
Liberal Policies make cities more expensive. Progressives eat themselves for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. SF has transformed from a city of limousine liberals to private jet liberals. Living in SF for over 10 years transformed me from a liberal to anything but (but definitely not a Republican). Liberal policies don’t work as intended. A city that has been run by 100% democrats for the past 20 years still hasn’t learned the lesson. Maybe in 20 more years they might start paying attention and taking off the blinders.
Ok, forget ethnic cleansing.
Would you accept economic colonialism?
Economic colonialism?… Sure. But then, it cannot help but be noted that colonialism was most often accompanied by… ah… er… oh… “depopulation” of the coveted region to the point of brink of extermination.
But, what the hell? There was treasure to be had the “natives” weren’t fully exploiting.
Eliminating RC and replacing it with a public assistance program will never happen when the city gets private landlords to subsidize everyone in RC units. People like “pity the lords..” prefer wholesale handouts on the backs of private citizens. And in a super tight, limited and expensive market like SF’s it creates tremendous distortions in the rental market. Good to some people, bad for others.
UPDATE: Ballot Measure Could Yield 30-Month Housing Moratorium.
Most building need to be replaced anyway so they won’t fall down in the earthquake. Just keep the design fresh and high standards on building codes.