As we first reported earlier this year:

With the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development having formally determined that the proposed development of 178 affordable apartments to rise up to six stories in height across the half-block-plus parking lot parcel at 88 Broadway would not have a significant effect on the environment, the development team is now planning to break ground this August.

And if the ground is broken in August, the development, which includes 53 units of senior housing in a building to rise up to six stories in height on the eastern spur of the site fronting (735) Davis Street, should be ready for occupancy in March 2020 with the construction workers “expected to park on the street or in nearby garages, or to use transit” as the entire site will be under construction at the same time.

That being said, an appeal of the City’s environmental determination for the project has been filed by a distant neighbor in Telegraph Hill, as we first reported last month. And if the aforementioned determination was to be overturned, and a full Environmental Impact Report (EIR) was required, it could add a year (or two) to the development’s timeline, even with the streamlined approval process for affordable housing projects now in place.

The appeal is now set to be heard by San Francisco’s Planning Commission next week.  And San Francisco’s Planning Department is recommending that the Commission reject said appeal and uphold the environmental determination for the development, noting that “no substantial evidence supporting a fair argument that a significant environmental effect may occur as a result of the project has been presented that would warrant preparation of an EIR.”

That being said, the Department also notes: “By upholding the [Preliminary Mitigated Negative Declaration for the project] (as recommended), the planning commission would not prejudge or restrict its ability to consider whether the proposed project’s uses or design is appropriate for the neighborhood,” as newly rendered by Leddy Maytum Stacy Architects below.

We’ll keep you posted and plugged-in.

27 thoughts on “Planning Recommends Rejection of Affordable Housing Appeal”
  1. Ahh yes. The tentacles of THD (via a concerned private citizen) swooping down from its ivory castle on the hill.

  2. Why do they only show Millennials in the marking materials for these projects? Is [Ron] Conway planning to have all us remaining Gen X’ers hauled off to a relocation camp in Hayward?

    1. You must have forgotten to wear your glasses. I spot gray-haired stock figures in each of the four photos above.

      1. I guess the occasional gray hair is allowed to visit, but those are all boomers pictured. No X’ers…we aren’t all gray yet. Also, at least two of the gray hairs are transparent, suggesting that they might actually be ghosts.

        1. Well of course they’re ghosts.

          Did you notice how many don’t seem to know how cross-walks work? Several of the people pictured are in the cross-walks, but most seem to be heading out of them into the middle of the street. And don’t get me started on the cyclist who’s ignoring the bike line and riding down the center stripe. Sure ways of becoming a ghost in SF.

    2. For approximately the same reason that bald, short, squat, middle-age dudes are not in particularly high demand for the demonstration room at auto trade shows.

    3. I like how the asphalt and sidewalks in the renderings are spotless. Not a pothole or bit of litter to be seen….:)

    4. Yes Gen X got the short end of the stick. It seemed that if we made the same sacrifices as our parents, we would get the same rewards. At least the Millennials can see they’ll never have the same standard of living as the Boomers, so they might as well just enjoy life until the government bails them out.

        1. Strange, is that why they’re actually saving money for the future at higher rates than previous generations?

          Strange, is that why they actually HAVE retirement savings unlike the previous generations who just went “huh, I dunno, I’ll figure it out later.”?

          1. Many in previous generations had pensions. Over the last 20-30 years employers bought out employee’s pensions (paid them off) and told them to manage their own money. Or they were turned into 401Ks. Also worker’s wages rose very slowly during the 80’s and 90’s. Many did not have enough income to save.

        2. “Millennials will be the generation that defaults on US Treasuries.”

          Please explain the mechanism by which a sovereign issuer of currency can possibly default, let alone an abstraction such as a “generation” of a cohort. A sovereign issuer of currency can choose not to play its debts, for entirely political reasons, but under what circumstances can a sovereign issuer of currency be compelled to default?

          Defaulting on bonds sounds impressive in an ooga-booga scawy monsters! kind of way, but it’s just simplistic and meaningless propaganda intended to keep the fiscal stimulus function of government off the table so that we all stay beholden to and dependent on the whims of the banksters of Wall St and their .001% cohort.

          1. Quite simple actually. Inflation as a monetary mechanism and debt forgiveness as a fiscal one.

          2. We won’t default, at best we will negotiate a restructuring, at worst well look what ended the Great Depression. But when the bond holders realize they will be paid back in currency that is sorely devalued, they will demand very high interest on new issues, which will create even more problems. It’s not the millenials’ fault, things went really south under Nixon. But someone should probably tell them that everything about our system is meant to punish savers.

            In other news, Zillow SF Home Price Index just posted its first red month since 2016, and the Rent Index chart has also turned red again and looks really bad.

          3. Two beers, if we’re talking about the U.S. Government (the ultimate issuer of U.S. Treasury bonds), then the circumstances under which the sovereign issuer can be compelled to default is pretty easy to imagine. Any future congress can fail to raise the debt ceiling for any number of reasons, the Treasury will at some point after that run out of borrowing authority, and boom! the United States will default on its obligation to pay interest on outstanding bonds as those coupon payments are due to creditors. You don’t need to get into any legalistic hypotheticals around the fact that the U.S. government borrows in a currency it controls. If the debt ceiling is breached, and it isn’t raised when the Treasury runs out of money, it’s going to be, yes, forced to default.

            That’s what running out of borrowing authority means. In case you weren’t following the news last summer, none of this is particularly speculative.

          4. You make my point, Brahma. The debt ceiling is an artificial and unnecessary political construct. It is designed to direct attention away from the status of the US govt as a sovereign issuer of currency, and to frighten workers away from demanding government compensate the gains to worker productivity that have been completely redirected to the top over the last forty years. The Treasury, as a sovereign issuer of currency, is never obligated to borrow, and does so only for purely political reasons. The US has never defaulted on debt, and should it ever choose to do so, it would be for purely voluntary, self-created reasons. Why would an agency have to borrow what it has the Constitutionally-granted power to create? Qui bono?

            Mr Fudd, you’re repeating tautologies, not making an argument. You’re not explaining why and how “[m]illennials will be the generation that defaults on US Treasuries.”

            Sabbie, your generation (and subsequent ones) got the shaft in part because increases to worker productivity — instead of being equitably shared between labor and capital as they had been for the forty years following the Great Depression — have been completely captured by capital. The gap has been filled in with consumer debt, and I think you know how that game ends.

            And yes, this has everything to do with housing.

    5. Who cares about Ron Conway? NIMBYs and their ilk sound like Arab countries, always blaming Israel (and not their own stupid/misguided policies) for everything, instead here it’s always the evil Ron Conway.

  3. Hey Socketsite: is it legally (or grammatically?) correct to say “With the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development having formally determined that…”? What I mean is MOHCD didn’t determine it; presumably the developer hired an environmental consultant to wrote the Neg Dec, and then MOHCD is supporting the project still and by extension the findings of that report and other due diligence they presumably reviewed. I’m not an expert; that’s just how I think it works.

    1. The Housing and Community Development Office does not send out their own experts to draft an environmental study. It makes a determination based on the information presented weighed against the regulatory requirements. So, it is grammatically correct to say “formally determined,” as in determined based on the evidence presented and the law. That is how it works.

      1. Right.. they don’t determine the environmental effects. Environmental effects is the object of the sentence, taking the action of the verb to determine. The experts determine the effects, MOHCD determines whether or not to support the project in light of those effects and other due diligence. That’s why I feel the sentence is grammatically incorrect.

        1. They make an adjudication based on the evidence presented. That is the same thing as making a determination. Just like a judge doesn’t go out and research the facts to make a determination, he or she rules based on the evidence presented.

          Your are construing the word “determine” much too narrowly.

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