The California housing department has once again made it clear: It’s watching San Francisco.
Supervisor Myrna Melgar said that 45 minutes before Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting, the city received an anticipated “corrective action” letter from the state.
The city, the state noted, had failed to fix its 82,000-unit building plan, the so-called housing element, and meet its first deadline to pass a compliant outline of future housing production.
Make the needed changes, it warned, or risk decertification and a bevy of penalties.
And, by the way, it added, the state advised striking an amendment approved on Monday by the Land Use and Transportation committee.
“The new amendments could potentially limit the impact of the Ordinance,” the letter states. “To safely ensure that the City implements this Action on time, HCD recommends that the Board of Supervisors pass the Ordinance without these or additional substantive amendments.”
The supervisors declined the state’s advice. Instead, they unanimously voted to postpone the legislation a week, feeling comfortable that they could rectify the legislation before a Dec. 28 deadline.
“If we vote on it today or next week … it still leaves us … a good two weeks before the corrective action compliance,” Supervisor Myrna Melgar.
At issue was an amendment by Supervisor Rafael Mandelman to require a conditional-use authorization — adding a step in the process — before demolishing a unit if the building was constructed in 1923 or earlier. He also aimed to hear an amendment at Thursday’s Planning Commission to prevent “monster homes,” which was not explicitly mentioned in the state’s letter.
“We are in the era where we are not trying to have as many conditional-use authorizations,” Mandelman said. “To do that, we needed to amend the streamlining legislation.”
Pro-development advocacy groups said adding those amendments was “tempting fate,” potentially dragging out the process and setting up failure in meeting the Dec. 28 deadline. Failure to meet the deadline threatens the loss of millions of dollars in transit and affordable housing funds, a loss of local control, and potential vulnerability to lawsuits.
Still, Melgar remained confident that the city will pass the housing element by the deadline.
Meanwhile, Supervisor Shamann Walton questioned the broader legislation, particularly about cutting developer fees from affordable housing projects. He said his district builds affordable housing successfully without cutting fees, which purportedly incentivizes developers to build.
“What are we trying to accomplish here? Just giving anything to a developer makes no sense to me,” Walton said. With few answers, he ultimately decided to vote to postpone by a week.
Supervisor Connie Chan, who co-sponsored a resolution with Board President Aaron Peskin to delay the deadline, pushed back on the state’s mandates on certain issues, she said. She was “disappointed to see how [the housing element process] continues to unfold. The goalposts continue to move away from us … as we try to comply,” Chan said.
Supervisor Matt Dorsey cautioned that he’d rather San Francisco “be an example of how to comply, instead of a cautionary tale of how not to.” Still, he, too, voted to postpone decision-making by a week.
“We are cutting it close,” Melgar said. “However, this is a complicated city.”
The supervisors voted unanimously to continue the legislation to Dec. 5.
Housing elements don’t address the financing bottleneck keeping thousands of permitted, shovel-ready projects from being built. Nor do CUAs create such financing bottlenecks. San Francisco could eliminate every development requirement tomorrow and it wouldn’t make financing suddenly appear.
I don’t think they’ve done studies on every cost, but as far as the % affordable requirements, some midrise units would get built by lowering it. A holistic retooling might unlock quite a bit – point is right now we don’t know. What’s more – if the economic climate changes, our regulation should be ready to allow all the units that wilted on the vine in the last expansion as developers waited years for approval, saw projects thwarted due to opposition, etc. Why should we sit on our hands just because the financing doesn’t work this very instant?
Keep tempting fate, supes
Wiener’s developer extortion legislation reminds me of state preemption in Texas, Austin-bashing, that’s a favorite technique of Republicans to deal with liberal and progressive localities.
There are two issues here. One is the time it takes to get buildings built, and the other is what is built. These state bills are attempting to speed up construction without constraint on what is being built.
Speed is not the issue. The issue is what we are losing and what we are gaining. We cannot afford to lose the affordable housing we have to build more expensive housing. We also need to fill the empty units we already built at the state’s insistence. This brings up the elephant in the room that is “what gets counted” toward the RHNA numbers. That gets us back to the question of who are we trying to house and why. This is the conversation we need to have in Sacramento and with the candidates who are running for office. Who are we building for?
Sure, the state’s got SF and others by the curlies. If this was of such utmost importance, the state should go and find the funds for their mandate.
Garbage politics. None of these people, Wiener front in line, will ever get my vote again over this charade.
Daniel,
Give the guy credit.
Wiener’s a housing genius lawyer.
Had a friend who worked at firm with him before he ran for office and they said that everyone walking through the door wanted Scott as their lawyer.
I’d like to see him turn his labor towards infrastructure and figure out how we get the million new San Franciscans watered and washed during droughts.
It could be worse.
We could be living anywhere else in the World.
lol
I dare anyone to try to figure out the process by which the State decided how many “units” a city must add before they rammed it down our throats. Which cities in California have equivalent “unit” density to San Francisco? How many units were destroyed in the 60’s and 70’s to put in the freeways and street widenings those same bureaucrats so love? How many fewer houses would san francisco have now if this city hadn’t obstructed the state plans to cover this city in freeways? The “experts” often get it wrong. I fully support the supervisors being careful here.
That said, it should be enlightening to see that the only methods they think about for meeting this increased density involve making it easier for big developers to come in and bulldoze the city to put in their trendy spreadsheet architecture highrises. Urban renewal anyone? What about helping small developers adding one unit here, two there by removing some of the myriad of requirements that only big developments can afford?
“The new amendments could potentially limit” what part of speech is this and how can the state use such a statement to claim anything? Looks like a possible future tense because it includes the word “could”. Potentially sounds like possibly and that does not sound like a facts based on data. None of this sounds like legal language.
Some think that sea level rise and subsidence will flood the areas south of market where the bulk of the density has been built. We might use the same language, “potentially could” to describe the fate of those new buildings that state wants to force on use as well.
What will the state do to ensure that the new properties it wants built will be sustainable and for how long? Banks and insurance companies are leaving the state for a reason. They are not going to risk the loses the state is trying to force on the cities.
It is time for new leadership in Sacramento and a roll back of insane state policies that are not solving the affordability problems they created, but, making them worse.
Loving the downfall of the supes’ hubris. Just build some long needed housing for the many people who want to live here.
One weeks pay for one months stay!
We have a baseline for wages but not accommodation.
This makes no sense and simply doesn’t work.
We need to mandate that all new multifamily complexes include a percentage of baseline units (300 Sq Ft) that can ONLY rent for 40 hours net pay at minimum wage.
When the persons income exceeds +X% (determined by the local authority) of minimum wage they are expected to move on to a market rate unit.
This will eliminate the need to subsidize market rate units and create a viable option for those on fixed incomes.
For the average lowest rent in 2022, it ranged from $1,200 to $1,500 per month in many places.
The monthly income, based on the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour for a full-time job of 40 hours per week, would be approximately
7.25 USD/hour × 40 hours/week × 4.33 weeks/month
7.25USD/hour×40hours/week×4.33weeks/month, which amounts to around $1,256.96 per month before taxes.
Big Brother demands you bend over to it’s will…
You say this as SF has one of the biggest homeless and rent crisis in the country. Big Brother wants sf to build some housing… Very scary!
Erick,
SF has something like 50 or 60,000 projects already approved for Big Brother to build.
Big Brother should go to the Bank and ask his Big Brother:
“Hey Bro, what’s the holdup with the cash, man ??