A modification to the approved plans for the French American International School’s 365-foot-tall tower to rise on the parking lot parcel at 98 Franklin Street, at the intersection of Oak, is on the table.
As newly proposed and rendered by SOM, with placeholders for One Oak and 10 South Van Ness in the background, the height of the 98 Franklin Street tower would be increased to 400 feet, which would yield 385 residential units, up from 345 apartments as approved, along with 85,000 square feet of space for the International High School within the tower’s 5-story podium, 3,000 square feet of ground floor retail space, and a basement garage for 110 cars.
And yes, a building permit for the development has been requested, and was in the works, but is currently on hold pending approval of the additional height and plans.
These building need to go up in the condition that the city removes the rest of the central freeway.
So, if I’m headed from the Richmond to the East Bay, you’d prefer that I clog city streets until SoMa, and in the process generate more pollution and surface street congestion? Or for the reverse direction – sure it backs up to the Duboce and Fell ramps – but you’d rather have all those cars backed up on SoMa streets and through the Tenderloin, instead of up off the surface? Division and the Central Freeway actually work – even when congested – and “tear it down!!!” is not a constructive response.
The 480 Embarcadero Freeway was torn down, and the Embarcadero / Ferry Building area flourished. Traffic was fine.
The Central Freeway through Hayes Valley was torn down, and the Hayes Valley area flourished. Traffic is (mostly) fine. I say this as a Panhandle area resident who uses the Octavia onramp regularly.
The same result will happen if/when the 280 spur and the remaining central freeway come down. The neighborhoods will flourish and traffic will be fine. It’s amazing that we have multiple examples of success and people use the same, proven-to-be-false arguments.
Division St is an underbelly of SF and prevents everything around it from succeeding. Personally I would rank the 280 spur removal ahead in the queue, but both should go.
agree 100%—studies over and over show that when lanes get removed, fewer people drive (and when they are added, far more drive). Removing a freeway reduces emissions/pollution, even if it *feels* like congestion is worse because more people are on surface streets. Driving fast isn’t better for the environment than driving slowly, especially as combustion engine efficiency has been improved over the last three decades.
the number of cars in SF has increased since the freeway was removed. i doubt its because of the freeway, but lets not kid ourselves that cars/household are decreasing in SF
We should take out all the streets and return them to dunes and sawgrass. I bet you’d really see car ownership plummet then!
One can debate whether Hayes Valley “flourished” when local blue-collar businesses and gyms were replaced by twee overpriced boutiques serving hipster bros … but regardless, you are (deliberately?) missing the point that there are broader impacts from removal than on the specific area that was literally under the former freeway. Octavia is a joke, and a pedestrian/cyclist nightmare (source: I’m a bike commuter) as is the Oak approach to Octavia, backed up for blocks of idling cars, fumes, and noise.
“local blue-collar businesses and gyms”
– Don’t forget the drug-dealing and street prostitutes!
Hayes Valley was sketchy AF back then.
Hunter is right. There is a ton of research that disagrees with you.
Also, what you see now is not what you’ll see forever.
– They just made Page St bike only (as you likely know) and are planning to close the Haight St onramp to improve the pedestrian experience.
– 25 years from now, concerns about “idling cars, fumes and noise” will be massively reduced because we’ll be all electric.
Do you think SF would be better with the Embarcadero freeway or Central Freeway? Name a freeway, the area immediately surrounding it is usually depressed and polluted.
If SFCTA get their way you wouldn’t run through Soma b/c that was going to be tolled through congestion pricing. To avoid that, I imagine traffic flows would completely hammer the Mission/Army St.
I have lived at the corner of Oak and Gough since 1980. The Central Freeway overpass kept traffic AWAY from the area.
agree, no one is taking traffic and pollution into account. sure it would be nice to get rid of the tent city under the freeway, but there are plenty of tent cities all over the city. the city needs to deal with that. hayes valley is nicer after the fell ramp was shut down, but i guarantee it increased pollution as traffic is awful on oak and octavia to get to freeway. as much as the city might like, cars arent going away. there is no viable public transport to get from 80% of the city to the peninsula
Gas cars are going away. Once we’re electric, pollution will drop to zero.
Don’t get your hopes too high. There is zero perspective that battery and charging performance can improve to a point that electric is going to scale. Missed opportunity to move into hydrogen which can, so we’ll be stuck with hybrid ICEs for a long time.
agree gas cars will go away, but when. weve had electric cars now for 20 yrs and what % of cars are now electric. I know its higher in SF, but still very low (~5%). the portion of new cars us up to 20% so progress but its slow. cars in general are not going away though, and i wonder if SF will ever see an actual decrease absent population reduction
Cars will still be here, but the transition to electric might be sooner than you think. In Norway, 85% of all new cars sold are electric. It’s possible to do that here too.
yes, its possible, but i have my doubts. i remember having an argument with several people in 2014 about the time it would take for self-driving cars…
So far EVs cover low hanging fruit cases, used as commuter appliances and the like. There are no answers for the vast pool of ppl who park on the curb and do not have (adequate) charging at work. Look at the parking lot of a ski resort up in Tahoe. You see a couple/three EVs. Because, one issue, there’s no reasonably quick topping up on the return trip into the Bay Area. Everybody who heard the stories of hours long waits at charging stations will not get an EV any time soon. Then there’s the cost. Unobtainium unless you make way into the six figures. We could be deep into the hydrogen fuel cell conversion already. Instead we’re treading water because the infrastructure and reasonably priced EVs aren’t there and won’t be for a long time.
I agree with Panhandle Pro, at least as far as passenger cars. “Daniel”‘s posts sounds like someone talking their book. He must own a Toyota Mirai or be a Toyota stockholder or possibly a disgruntled Honda Clarity owner.
I’ll come out and tell you that I own one car, a Nissan Leaf (an early EV) that I bought in 2013 and I’m still driving it now when I don’t get around via bike. The charging infrastructure has improved by leaps and bounds in the last several years, and as a…ahem…renter I park on the street, can’t charge at home and have never run out of charge and had to have it towed. I don’t ever drive to Tahoe ski resorts, so I guess I am in the “low hanging fruit” category.
I do charge at work, and during the time I’ve owned it, I have had one employer fully subsidize and provide charging, one who didn’t provide charging at all, and one who provided a charger at market rates and never had a problem getting where I was going. I agree with him that if you can’t charge at work and you don’t have a garage then driving an EV is challenging, to put it mildly. I think this is the reason that 9 out of every 50 battery EV owners goes back to internal combustion.
I have associates and co-workers in the South Bay who drive fuel cell electric vehicles full-time and swear by them. New hydrogen fueling stations are all over the place there and expanding pretty much quarterly. But the only reason they drive them is because the auto manufacturer covers the cost of hydrogen while they own or lease the car! If they had to pay market rates for hydrogen, none of them would drive a fuel cell car.
But battery electric charging station options are expanding much faster. And get real, the infrastructure costs for hydrogen are incredibly higher than for battery electric vehicles, especially once you account for creating hydrogen in a sustainable way, where it’s clear that fuel cell vehicles don’t make sense. And providing charging for battery EVs is getting less expensive (than the infrastructure for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles) all the time.
@”brahma”. Guessed wrong, I drive an old school piston banger and no I don’t have a position in Toyota.
Two things of note: First, the above does not even touch on the issue of rare earth metals needed to build EVs, and second, if you think the electricity you charge your Leaf with is all sustainable green you’d be disappointed to find out otherwise. In CA, you’re having a mix just like you’d have for hydrogen production.
Depending where you live in the world, it actually turns out hybrid/electric is “greener” than pure EVs b/c electricity is produced from coal and nuclear for the foreseeable future there. Hydrogen could be produced in the deserts around the globe where solar is abundant and where it can be compressed and shipped to the higher latitudes.
And finally, to head this argument off, photo-voltaic is not the only way to produce solar energy.
And forgot to mention – so you didn’t take advantage of the CA subsidy when you bought your Leaf?
i dont understand this comment: “…“greener” than pure EVs b/c electricity is produced from coal and nuclear for the foreseeable future there…”
nuclear is by far the cleanest and greenest form of energy. we should be so lucky.
Jimbo: we are so lucky, in California at least. From Biden grants PG&E $1.1 billion to keep Diablo Canyon nuclear plant open, first bullet point:
The insertion of the word “help” is kinda concerning. Hopefully PG&E and The State won’t waste this federal money like they did for High Speed Rail.
The piece states that Diablo Canyon is California’s single largest source of power and provides 17% of its zero-carbon electricity.
“nuclear is by far the cleanest and greenest form of energy. we should be so lucky.”
This is not true.
it’s absolutely true
No, it is not. Please provide your evidence.
this data (which doesn’t take into account that many solar panels are also created through modern slavery)
Well, I didn’t mean to sign on to the notion that nuclear-generated electricity is the “cleanest and greenest form of energy”. I merely wanted to say that if we have an existing nuclear plant (and we do, at Diablo Canyon) and want to drastically reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, keeping the existing plant around is a better idea than closing it down before the end of it’s useful life and then having to depend on natural gas fired peaker plants.
Even if we grant that nuclear power is a greener way to generate electricity than burning fossil fuels, solar voltaic is a cheaper and greener approach, and that doesn’t even touch on the ongoing need to dispose of radioactive waste in the case of nuclear power.
Nuclear power produces radioactive waste which lasts forever. Its power plants are also a natural target for terrorists and other bad actors, as is happening in Ukraine right now. If something goes wrong, they could unleash environmental catastrophe on the whole world.
Solar and wind power are actually the cleanest and greenest forms of energy generation.
wind and solar use slave manufacturing, some radioactive waste can be recycled and there is good storage capabilities for the rest of it.
the terrorist comment is a red herring and theres no real threat. what is happening in ukraine is not comparable unless you think the US will be innvaded and occupied
“there is good storage capabilities for the rest of it.”
Where? The US is a large country and we have not managed to figure this one out.
Do I think America will be invaded? No. Do I think America will be hit by terrorists? Yes, it’s happened before and will happen again. Was Fukushima hit by war or by terrorists? No. (And outside of human bad actors, both Fukushima and Diablo Canyon sit in earthquake prone regions by the sea. Nothing could go wrong at Fukushima either, remember?)
Why are you linking building housing to your desire for Central Freeway removal?
Yours, and others, opinions is why nothing gets built or has significantly increased costs.
(BTW, I am not making a statement for or against freeway removal.)
Such silliness makes us the City that can’t.
After a historic three decade building boom that completely transformed the eastern neighborhoods and created entire new neighborhoods out of landfill, adding tens of thousands of residential and commercial units, anyone who can say “nothing gets built” has zero credibility. I would suspect a stooge with an agenda, but I don’t want to be uncivil.
everybody has an agenda . Even you
My agenda is transparent and obvious, and not obfuscated behind disingenuous appeals to authority, misconstrued economics homilies, or a pretense that noble developers heroically building luxury condos is in the best interests of the working class people who can no longer afford to live in now-gentrified neighborhoods.
two beers, your agenda is to petrify the city of the mid-90s. nostalgia is not great public policy
If my agenda were actually to “petrify” the city, I would choose a much more historically interesting era to fossilize, and probably one from before I was born, like the beatniks, daddy-o.
agree. this is not stopping housing. the board of supervisors is stopping housing. and western soma is way way way underzoned
In which direction do you propose this condition will be in force? The developers should sit on their plans until the freeway is gone? Or, the city should not approve the plans until the freeway is gone?
SF is already the most dense city in CA. Does density have limits?
Yes, the limits are reached when people stop wanting to live here. Increased density is always better than sprawl.
“Yes, the limits are reached when people stop wanting to live here.”
So plan for future like tokyo with family of 4 living in 500 sqft? hmmm
It would be an honor to be compared to a modern functional city like Tokyo.
With professional uniformed pushers to shove people into packed subway cars like sardines in a can?
Be careful what you wish for.
As of 2015, average rental cost per square foot in Tokyo was $2.54 where as in SF it was $5.00. Tokyo does indeed appear to be quite a bit more functional. If you’ve ever actually been there, it’s a delightful city, with crowded parts but plenty of suburban-like areas as well. Kind of a combination between LA and New York.
Yep, but I’d bet that far fewer people want to live in SF than Tokyo. Regardless, we have endless surface parking lots, 1-story warehouses, and neighborhoods of sprawl that can be densified for centuries before we get there.
SF is at about 19K people/square mile. Brooklyn is about double that. SF will never be Manhattan, but I think it would be an even better city if it was closer to Brooklyn. Unfortunately, all of the existing housing isn’t going anywhere, so we need to take advantage of these underutilized commercial lots and build tall there.
“we need to take advantage of these underutilized commercial lots and build tall there.”
Brilliant. Let’s turn what little is left of the precious space for the essential jobs that require an actual onsite human worker into more vacant condos for bankrupt pizza delivery startup NFT meditation apps whose coders are either being laid off by the thousands or styling awesome button hover states for much less in places where real estate hasn’t become a financialized Ponzi asset.
It really is just top-down class war, isn’t it?
You forgot crypto.
Hey, I was trying to be subtle!🤣
i think the amount of idiots invested in crypto may be overstated. is it a scam? yes. but how many ignorant people really have over say $25K invested in crypto?
By essential jobs, do you mean the Honda dealership that closed down on its own? Or perhaps the Furniture Mart, which also closed down on its own and thankfully was restored by the software industry as the Twitter building? I know the parking lot on Van Ness and Market has been sitting there for decades and no “essential jobs” ever decided to take advantage of that precious land. Light industrial has its place in the outskirts of the city, in SF and everywhere else.
we can also build parking garages if needed in industrial areas. surface parking lots are a waste of space
@ unlivablecity
So another Ten Year Tourist then.
If you had actually been living in SF in the 1980’s and 1990’s you would know exactly why the Central Freeway was not torn down. Despite huge pressure from special interests to try to so after Loma Prieta. The battle to save the Embarcadeo failed. Despite huge public outcry from those affected. And the huge economic fallout predicted. Which happened. But hey, tourists now have better backdrops when taking selfies and some very well heeled insiders made a financial killing from increased property prices on the Bay front. But everyone else suffered huge inconvenience. Or started shopping elsewhere.
The Central Freeway is a key part of arterial road traffic flows for about one third of the City. Or whats left of the freeway. Demolishing the Oak / Fell ramps has turned traffic into those neighborhood into a perma-parking lot. It used to flow very freely. So like all locals I now exclusively use side streets to get around and get on the freeway.
Freeways are great. Arterials are better. And reconfiguring the City street infrastructure for a tiny minority of transient residents, mostly visitors from some comfortable suburb, and the 1% of very well healed bike users, is the height of arrogant stupidity.
Build more freeways. Finish the building of what was planned back in the 1950’s. Although the GG / Bay Bridge bayside connector might be covered. Then the City might be pleasant to get around against for the 90% plus of City residents who are daily motor vehicle road users. Both private and public transit. It was nt too bad to drive around back in the 1980’s. Apart from 19’th Ave of course. But thats what Sunset Blvd was for. If they had finished the original 101 / GG connector plan.
As the MTC said this week, we are never building more freeways in the Bay Area, and the negative impacts to residents (noise, air pollution, climate change) are far worse than the congestion you mention. More freeway removals will be happening as we improve transit and densify SF—almost nobody who lived her when the Embarcadero Freeway existed thinks its removal was a net negative (except you). Maybe you should move to Dallas.
I used to live in SF in early 2000s and remember the central freeway that connected to Fell and Oak streets. It was much more pleasant to use as a motorist than what is there now. But I can’t deny that the resulting neighborhood in Hayes Valley that was created after it was torn down is much more desirable from an urban and pedestrian perspective. Its death brought that area to life.
In my experience, not infrequently using Octavia + central freeway (Oak/Fell) either way? All you gotta do is chill. It works for getting to southern neighborhoods or the Bay Bridge, and it’s faster than driving through surface streets.
“Build more freeways. Finish the building of what was planned back in the 1950’s”
– This may be the most out-of-touch POV I’ve ever read on SS. And I’ve been around since the days of Fluj and LMRIM.
And those who were living here since before the 1990’s and who are not banana nutcakes will happily tell you that the majority of San Franciscans did not “battle to save the Embarcadeo [sic]” Freeway. Come on.
The road formerly known as Route 480 was regarded as an eyesore from day one, and it was built primarily because it was forced on S.F. by the State Highway Commission. There were ballot initiatives to tear it down as early as 1986, well before the 1989 earthquake. And then after it was damaged in the quake, the state had to relent when it became obvious to voters that repairing it would be just as expensive as rebuilding it from scratch. And based on what actually happened with the Bay Bridge repair, if we had gone ahead with repairing it, that effort would have gone way over budget and been years late.
Tearing down The Embarcadero Freeway was one of the best pieces of public policy I’ve seen happen in The City.
I am a native daughter. I’ve lived at the corner of Oak and Gough since 1980. I worked at the Opera House for 46 years. The neighborhood was better with the Central Freeway moving traffic AWAY from Hayes Valley.
the central freeway also makes the city safer for pedestrians/cyclists. Would i prefer it be underground? yes, but not going to happen
This. If the plan was to underground the Central Freeway or 280, then I’d be all for it (and willing to cough up tax dollars [at least, some…] to pay for it). The fact that the tear-down crowd immediately reject the idea of undergrounding shows that their goal isn’t a smooth or efficient city, or improved quality of living *for all*, but instead the imposition of a twee electric-bike riding, boba-sipping lifestyle on us all, regardless of individual needs or circumstance.
As a long-time urban cyclist I respectfully disagree with this notion. In my experience, drivers coming off the freeway still have a freeway mentality – and those trying to get on it are already on the freeway in their mind – which results in faster, more agressive driving in the surrounding streets where cyclists are trying to get about safely.
So excited for the future of The Hub. Once this building, One Oak, the Honda Dealership and the currently under construction building on Market/Van Ness (Australian developer group), The Hub will be cemented as a real place.
The warehouses between Franklin and Octavia, nestled in alleys between The Hub and Hayes Valley, will continue to rapidly rise in value.
“So excited for the future of The Hub”
Which real estate cycle future will this be?
The mad rush to quickly cram in half-vacant skytowers in several square blocks for now WFH or simply jettisoned pizza delivery/Ponzi coders, instead of letting time and social needs determine the best use of the land, has condemned this fakebrohood into being a textbook model of corrupt and disastrous civic planning for decades to come.
Appreciate the Snow Crash deep cut there.
The amount of vitriol you seem to have for the tech industry seems out of touch with the amount of time you spend commenting on an Internet forum.
Who doesn’t love a good tu quoque in the evening?
I was about to insert an emoji there, but I don’t want to be the cause of any high blood pressure incidents in this forum.
I hope you’re sitting down, but I live in a building, built by a developer, funded by a banker, owned by a landlord, sold by a an agent…ZOMG, I’m a hypocrite. Bring out the thumbscrews!
If you’ll promise to call 911 at the first sign of palpitations, I might even tell you about my independent commodity production small business run mostly through the internets. Rank villainy, indeed!
Now, if you’d be so kind as to suggest that “three beers” would be a more appropriate handle, it would be like old times on socketsite, and we could discuss once again how long-term slashing of interest rates in response to a solvency crisis would surely blow further, bigger asset bubbles that would eventually come due. Fun stuff!
As we all should know by now, San Francisco City College offers excellent low-cost classes in critical thinking that can help one identify and sidestep logical fallacies in the pursuit of sound discourse.
The lady doth protest too much, methinks. The thing about tu quoque, is that labeling it doesn’t negate the hypocrisy or prove the original author’s argument.
Tech is not the root of all evils – people are. More to the point, as related to SF real estate, taxes, economy and government, I fear that as we collectively trend more and more towards the “tech is evil and destroying the city” zeitgeist, we are going to wake up one morning and wonder where all the funding that we were using to build our social Xanadu disappeared to. There has to be a happy medium and it doesn’t start with demonizing an entire industry that, like most, is built on shades of grey. TechBros are annoying, but so are unrealistic Progressives. Welcome to San Francisco.
The thing about a tu quoque is that it is a logical fallacy, not a reasoned counter. Which brings us to your strawman-laden retort of false assumptions, disingenuous framing, simplistic Manichean reductionism, and Sesame Street ethics and political economy.
I might be rough on the doughy-shaped, wierdly-bearded, boba-chewing, culturally-barbaric, self-important patrons of the dearly-missed Ice Cream Museum and Virtual Van Gogh Experience, but I don’t blame them for blowing the greatest multi-asset bubble in history in which the glorified symbol manipulators were really just massively over-compensated pawns in the top-down class war of the late-stage neo-liberal dispensation that culminated in an unprecedented orgy of accommodative monetary policy (i.e. free money for billionaires to gamble on self-driving, self-actualizing pizza delivery robots) that is only now beginning to wind down (with consequences that shouldn’t catch any plugged-in reader by surprise😁).
I’ll be more direct this time. It’s only a logical fallacy if I use the argument to attack your position. In this case, I was simply implying you are a hypocrite in the hope that it would spawn a little self reflection. We never got a chance to discuss your position because you resorted to ad hominem attacks, twice.
You may be surprised to learn that I too find ice cream museums and interest rates that were held far too low for far too long to be extremely distasteful. But I’m self aware enough to know that the world doesn’t revolve around me and my preferences or proclivities. Your rant has a lot of angst towards a lot of people. But I stand by my position that the tech industry is not progenitor of our social problems, perceived or real. People shape their lives and culture with the tools given to them. Like literature, radio, film and television before it, tech and the Internet has trended to the lowest common denominator as it became more accessible. The problem you seem to have is that you disagree with how a significant part of society chose to shape our culture and our policy. As far as culture goes, I get it. I too think most of social media and related tech is inane, and I helped to facilitate it. As far as policy goes, I have my opinions but try to learn opposing views from those smarter than I. I think the fed royally screwed up by keeping interest rates so low for so long. But I’m also fairly sure that Powell knows way more about it than I do, so I approach the situation with humility. Anyway, neither of us is King of the World and so we don’t get to dictate what others do with their time or money. We have to convince, persuade, cajole. That’s the real art of the rhetorical process and it seems to elude you.
Again, more to the point related to this site, the Bay Area reaped the benefit of the tech economy for 40 years. We’re at an inflection point where we may be about to lose that. You may be jumping for joy at the thought of that prospect, but my position is that is short sighted. If we lose tech/med tech/venture capital, who is going to pick up the tab for all of the social programs we so desperately need? There will be no more Benioffs to fund endowments, there will be no more techies to buy ridiculously priced housing and pay commensurate property taxes. There will be fewer people to go to the bars, restaurants, and clubs, fewer to buy local art, fewer to patronize local services. How well did the collapse of the auto industry work out for Detroit? Flint? Did I miss your response to this question in your last post?
This argument is a microcosm of the position San Francisco finds itself in now. We had ridiculous amounts of money thrown at us that could have provided for for a secure future for most. But because left facing moderates and those left of center can’t seem to compromise to save their lives, we have a continuing housing crises, a homelessness crises, a drug crises, decreasing quality of life across the board, and have become something to be mocked in parts of the country and a cautionary tale in much of the rest. Good on us, I suppose. Way to kill the golden goose and lead by example. Your responses to many people on this site are indicative of the kind on intransigence that put us in this position. But unfortunately, you’re not special. There are a lot of people like you in this city on both sides of the argument.
Don’t bother responding by telling me that I need to learn rhetorical process and logic theory, that I need to go to community college, etc. I get it, you’re calling me dumb. I think you could improve your position by being more open to constructive conversation and differing opinions. Given that I don’t think that’s possible, good luck with your next thread. I’m out.
Oh. And Sesame Street is awesome. You should watch it sometime.
TL;DR. Sorry, life’s too short. I gave up halfway through the second paragraph. But if you want to throw up the strawman that I’m blaming the technoids for all our social ills, have at it. I’ll just say once again that the “tech” industry is a manifestation – albeit one of the most in-your-face manifestations – of late-stage financial capitalism. I use the square quotes to identify the largely high-level symbol manipulators that are characterized as tech (e.g. uber, faceborg, netflix) as opposed to actual engineering-based technology. Your axe to grind seems to be that style sheet coders don’t get no respect, and I can’t and won’t argue with your feelings.
What does this cost per square foot to build and what would the capital structure look like? I think the school would need a petit equity partner to make this happen.
Drawings are awesome, but if the Lumina condos are crashing in price, why does it make sense to build this? Does enough margin still exist?
I’d bet the request for increased height might be to offset the changing market dynamics. Also, this area is more desirable than 1st and Folsom, in my opinion. Downtown is dead and while this exact area is still up and coming, it’s closer to liveliness.
Related has agreed to provide $1 million for the city to develop Parcel K in Hayes Valley, located at the corner of Octavia Boulevard and Hayes Street. The city has expressed interest in replacing the vacant lot, currently used as a temporary restaurant and retail space, with 54 affordable housing units.
In addition to helping on Parcel K, Related Companies will purchase the former McDonald’s property at 600 Van Ness Avenue for the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development, with plans for 168 affordable housing units from 2015. The agreement is expected to get three stalled developments with a combined 607 units moving toward construction.
They’re going to build on that extremely lively parcel? Idiots.
as a parent at french american, i can say that they have a lot of money.
“Drawings are awesome” . . . I remember the lovely drawings of Le Boulevard Octavia during the fight(s) for Central Freeway teardown. Baby prams; pedestrians; bicyclists; a few motor vehicles. You know what WASN’T featured? Homeless encampments. As for building “affordable ” housing kindly stop the nonsense. We need NO income housing not LOW income housing.
stop stop stop the ridiculous notion of “affordable” housing . It’s pie-in-the-sky. Quite frankly we need “NO INCOME” housing . There are scores of people living on the sidewalks or haven’t you noticed.
How do you propose we build “no income” housing? I’m curious to hear your proposal in terms of financing land acquisition, construction, continued maintenance, etc. Also, what do those who do not qualify for “no income” housing go to find housing?
Just spitballing here, but I wonder how many homes the county, state, and federal correctional facilities budgets could provide for. And wonder of wonders, wouldn’t it be shocking if there were an inverse correlation between the number of homes provided and the number of prison cells required? Wouldn’t want to muscle in, though, on the the prison-industrial cartel that contributes millions of dollars to the political duopoly.
The state (at whatever level of govt) always provides for those who don’t need providing for, but can never come up with the scratch to help people needing actual help. Remember the bailouts for billionaires way back in the prehistoric times of the global financial crash? Who supports the private nuclear power plants that could never be run without government subsidies, handouts, and welfare? When was the last time arms manufacturers faced a “budget cliff?”
The only thing lacking to provide housing, and better housing, for all, is the political will. The political will is non-existent partly because the political duopoly is a client of the banker/builder/landlord/property sales agent cohort, and partly because the oligarchy doesn’t want the rest of the population to question why things are the way they are.
the city budget is about to take a big hit from a decrease in tax revenue. how much $ could be saved if the non-profits and city agencies acutally had to produce tangible results to get new contracts and large budgets.? theres at least 33% waste in that $14B budget
We can build “no income” housing. We spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year for the past 20 years bombing everyone in the middle east.
We could build a 400′ tall 98 Franklin Street in every city in the US every year and charge no rent to ‘ no income’ people for that kind of money. It’s all about choices.
I like that there is a school incorporated. Think it will help the kids realize they are part of a larger society.
and those people would more likely OD in housing unless they have a sobriety requirement. thats exactly was happened with the COVID hotels. unless you want people evicted from old housing stock, you better hope that there is some new market rate housing. we need much more affordable housing as well, but when it costs $1M/unit, you can just apply the “luxury” affordable housing moniker
A grotesquely out of scale speculative eyesore.
UPDATE: More Height for Market-Rate Tower Closer to Reality