Category Archives: Housing

CEQA, deregulated housing bills, Housing, Politics

There may be a buyer for the site of the proposed 39-story skyscraper

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By Norah Sheppards-Hutchins : padailypost – excerpt

There may be a potential buyer of the 80 Willow Road property in Men1o Park where a Russian billionaire wants to build a 39-story skyscraper, Councilman Drew Combs said Wednesday.

Over the last several weeks, Combs and Mayor Betsy Nash have been involved in discussions with the potential buyer, Combs said in an interview with the Post.

“They have presented themselves in their interactions with the city that it’s not an effort that looks to redevelop the property in the near term,” Combs said…

“They have indicated that their intended use of the campus could be accommodated with only minimal interior modifications,” Combs said… (more)

CEQA, deregulated housing bills, Housing, Planning, Politics

Has Wiener’s avalanche of housing bills actually led to more homes? Here’s what we know

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By Hannah Wiley, JD Morris : sfchronicle – excerpt

Marina Safeway Towers are only supported by Scott Wiener. Both Lurie and Supervisor Sherrill claim to oppose it. Neighbors hate it. Wiener has to bear the full responsibility for this project on his own along with the SF planning Department that hides behind him.

When one of state Sen. Scott Wiener’s first major housing bills died in its first committee hearing in 2018, the logical option would have been for the lawmaker to retreat after such a resounding loss. ..

It took Wiener seven years to finally pass legislation that cleared the way for more housing near transit hubs. Senate Bill 79, which went into effect in July, requires cities in a handful of counties, including San Francisco, to allow larger apartment buildings near train stations, ferry terminals and bus stops…

But it’s also true some of Wiener’s bills that once inspired major fights in the state Capitol have since created little to no housing. Meanwhile, San Francisco’s notorious housing crunch is getting worse — a point Wiener’s critics have seized on in his bid this year to represent the city in Congress. 

“If he’s such a champion of housing, why are we here?” Wiener’s opponent in the race, Supervisor Connie Chan, said in a recent interview with the Chronicle. She and Wiener have routinely been on opposing sides of San Francisco’s housing policy debates, and she has led some local efforts to resist state legislation he passed….

In the 15 years since Wiener first started working on housing policy, stretching back to his time on the Board of Supervisors, home prices have only skyrocketed across the state. The trend is even more pronounced in San Francisco, where an AI boom has attracted a new wave of wealthy tech workers. Rents and evictions are way up, heightening concerns that the expensive city is becoming unaffordable to all but the uber wealthy…

But Wiener’s approach has lost him some friends along the way, chief among them various unions that represent construction workers…

Lorena Gonzalez, president of the California Federation of Labor Unions, which endorsed Chan, said she voted for at least one of Wiener’s housing bills when she served in the Assembly. At the time, Gonzalez said she exchanged her vote for a guarantee on certain labor terms.

“And then he just kept coming back and taking away more from organized labor,” Gonzalez said. “With every bill, everything got worse.” …

Wiener’s approach has similarly rankled environmentalists, tenants’ rights activists and neighborhood preservationists who feel he often disregards their concerns with climate harms or gentrification.

Shanti Singh, legislative and communications director for Tenants Together, said her organization has in the past had issues with Wiener’s rezoning bills. Singh said it often felt like Wiener and his YIMBY allies failed to consider how massive development might create a domino effect of displacement for low-income renters. …

Wiener promised to take his same boundary-pushing approach on housing to Congress, where he said he would push a plan to build 8 million homes in the next decade. Among his proposals: paying cities $10,000 for every home they build, standing up more mixed-income social housing programs and stabilizing the construction workforce so it isn’t as disrupted by the boom-and-bust housing cycles...(more)

A lot of people are going to vote him out and then demand their representatives ignore his future bills that are going no where…

CA, CEQA, deregulated housing bills, Economy, Housing, Politics, Transportation

The Fay: When Housing Policy Meets the Real World

via email from wakeup

The Fay, 10 E Reed St, San Jose. Drone photo: Scott Keller, via C2K Architecture.

San Jose wanted to revitalize its downtown with more housing, and in 2022 the city waived nearly $9.9 million in taxes and fees for a fully market-rate development, The Fay. The concessions eliminated an $8.844 million affordable-housing obligation. The result was 336 market-rate apartments and no contribution of affordable units. The building opened to fanfare, but quickly proved a disappointment. Its studios leased out quickly, but the one- and two-bedroom units barely filled, leaving the building roughly 60% vacant.

With just 104 parking spaces for 336 apartments, city officials and renters both identified limited parking as a major factor that affected lease-up. The nearest garage was seven blocks away, and the only option was being continually ticketed for on-street parking. California housing laws have removed on-site parking requirements, both to reduce development costs and to encourage reliance on public transit. The Fay put that assumption to a real-world test. The policy removed the parking requirement. It did not remove the demand for parking, and transit did not make up the difference.

By January 2026, The Fay had gone through foreclosure and was valued at just $110 million. With 197 vacant units, the project was destabilized. San Jose stepped in to save it, committing $11.2 million from Measure E funds to master lease the 197 vacant units….

The city subsidized the 150 one-bedroom and 47 two-bedroom apartments, precisely the units that had failed to attract enough renters. The program serves middle-income tenants at 80% to 110% of Area Median Income — roughly $111,000 to $150,000 in annual earnings — with city workers bumped to the front of the applicant pool. It creates no low- or very-low-income units, and no permanently affordable units…

HOW THE CITY JUSTIFIES THE LIVE PROGRAM ON THEIR SITE

Continue reading The Fay: When Housing Policy Meets the Real World →

CA, deregulated housing bills, Housing, Planning, Politics, Transportation

State housing officials offer an opinion about Los Altos ballot proposal

BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT : padailypost – excerpt

State housing officials have weighed in on a ballot measure to preserve downtown parking lots in Los Altos.

Los Altos City Council would need to consider new places for housing if voters approve Measure D on Nov. 3, according to a letter from state housing official Brian Heaton…

“If voters adopt the ordinance, the city will be required to amend its Housing Element to analyze the ordinance as a potential governmental constraint on housing development, including, but not limited to, whether the parking plazas are still appropriate to include in the site inventory,” Heaton said in an Aug. 28 letter to Development Services Director Stephanie Williams.

Housing mandate

The Housing Element is a state-mandated plan for where more than 1,958 homes could be developed throughout the city by 2031…

Council members have warned that new housing could go in residential neighborhoods if downtown lots are no longer an option.

“In my conversations with residents, there’s very little enthusiasm for that solution,” Vice Mayor Larry Lang said at a meeting on July 24.

Lang said the city will also consider commercial areas like the Lucky supermarket at 2175 Grant Road or Andronico’s Community Markets at 690 Fremont Ave.

Residents want a say

Residents gathered over 2,600 signatures from registered voters in April to qualify Measure D for the November ballot…

“Residents and business owners are not opposed to thoughtful change. But we’re asking that the public have a meaningful say before public land is permanently altered,” resident Cindy Andrews said in a statement for the campaign.… (more)

CA, Economy, Housing, Politics

The Bay Area is ‘exporting’ the housing crisis to the rest of the state, report finds

By Danielle Echeverria : sfchronicle – excerpt (audio)

California’s housing crisis is moving inland. 

A new report from the Public Policy Institute of California looks at political opinions across the state. Among the most striking findings: Concern about housing has risen most acutely for residents in the Central Valley and the Shasta regions, as well as, to a lesser extent, larger swaths along the Oregon and Nevada borders.

However, in coastal regions like the Bay Area — which have faced a dire housing crunch for decades — the sense that housing is a paramount problem is actually declining, the researchers found, as people who can afford the region’s high housing costs are increasingly the only ones left living here. 

“The Bay Area has been exporting the (housing) crisis to the interior,” said Eric McGhee, the report’s author.

To come to that conclusion, the researchers used data from their own previous statewide survey, collected from 2016 to 2019, and compared it with answers to the same question about housing asked from 2023 to early this year.

What it revealed is that the share of Bay Area residents who said that housing was a “big problem” declined by about 10 to 15 percentage points compared to nearly a decade ago. But in the Kern region as well as the North Central part of the state, that share increased by more than 20 percentage points.

The findings underscore how the Bay Area’s housing economics and politics have impacts far beyond the region. Those downstream effects are largely driven by people who were priced out of the Bay Area and moved into the more affordable, interior parts of the state, McGhee explained.

That migration in turn pushed prices up in those communities.

Many lower income people in those interior regions were already spending much of their earnings on housing; as Bay Area transplants moved in and further inflated prices, many have been left with little recourse. The areas where concern rose the most are some of the poorest in the state, McGhee said.

“If you’re poor and you’re housing stressed, what are you supposed to do?” he said. In order to avoid ending up on the street, some pile into homes with more people than can comfortably fit. Others simply leave the state…

A key difference is that on average, people currently able to afford living in the Bay Area are the least personally affected by the problem, McGhee explained. High housing costs already pushed people who couldn’t afford it out of the region years ago, leaving largely those that could absorb those costs.

According to Census data, renters in the Bay Area are among the least “cost-burdened” by housing, which is defined as spending more than 30% of one’s gross income on rent. In other words, Bay Area residents recognize that housing in the region is a big problem, but for the most part are still here because they can afford it…

“The interior can no longer consider itself immune” from the housing crisis, he said…

…(more)

CA, Economy, Energy, Farms, food, Housing, Planning, Politics

California’s clashes over business regulation rage on as legislative session nears end

By Dan Walters : calmatters – excerpt (excerpt)

Back room dealers

Keep an eye on these 5 deals as California lawmakers close out the legislative session

Assembly Bill 2564, carried by Assemblymember Christopher Ward, …would prohibit retailers from engaging in “surveillance pricing,” which is a form of algorithmic pricing in which sellers use personal information to tailor prices to specific consumers….

Assembly Bill 1776, authored by Assemblymember Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, .. would broaden California’s anti-monopoly Cartwright Act, first enacted in 1907 to allow civil or criminal actions against corporations that monopolize markets….is aimed at collusion between two or more corporations to stifle competition and raise prices. But AB 1776 would also sanction actions against corporations that become dominant without colluding….The change was recommended by the California Law Revision Commission to curb monopolistic behavior framers of the original law never envisioned. It is backed by a long list of consumer advocates and unions…

RELATED:
Keep an eye on these 5 deals as California lawmakers close out the legislative session

Who does your representative work for?  How much help are the voters getting and how much help are our elected  representatives selling to the highest bidder?

CEQA, Housing, Planning, water

‘We cannot magic up more water’: the supply problems putting housing targets in England at risk

By Sandra Leville : theguardian – excerpt

WATER IN ENGLAND:  Council leaders say crumbling infrastructure and lack of water are jeopardising government’s plans for new homes

The government’s housebuilding agenda is hitting the stark reality of a lack of water and crumbling infrastructure across the east and south-east of England.

Half the country was declared to be in serious drought this week, for the second consecutive year, with the Environment Agency warning of dire consequences for the economy, environment and wildlife.

The parts of England in extreme water stress with residents under hosepipe bans are also where the government’s “build, baby, build” agenda is being targeted. Labour has promised to build 1.5m homes by the end of this parliament – a strategy retained by Andy Burnham…

Harvey said: “The Labour government’s unrealistic imposed housing targets don’t take account of the fact that the Environment Agency, Natural England and the water companies are all waving red flags about whether the water exists to supply them.”… (more)

From Gray Brechin, “

WATER IN AMERICA:  As you will see from the Guardian article below, Scott Wiener, the developers, and the YIMBYs who have gotten the California legislature to override local zoning controls and environmental constraints have their counterparts in the UK where massive new developments are projected for known floodplains and sensitive environmental sites. But now those counterparts are running headlong into the accelerating impacts of climate breakdown which is inescapable here where the heat is rising the rain has stopped, the hills and fields have bleached, the rivers, reservoirs, and aquifers are falling and the crops are failing. Although it’s still not as bad as France and Spain, wildfires have broken out in England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. And El Niño hasn’t kicked in yet. But there are still people here as there are there who insist that if you build it, water (and energy) will magically be found. But what if it isn’t?

 

CA, CEQA, deregulated housing bills, Housing, Planning, Politics

One of Marin’s biggest new housing projects could get derailed by a lawsuit

By Julie Johnson : sfchronicle – excerpt
The Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary campus in Strawberry is set to be converted into housing. A new legal challenge could derail it.
 

A group of neighbors is challenging Marin County’s approval of a major housing development project on the Tiburon Peninsula, arguing in a lawsuit filed this month that the county was wrong to allow plans to build residences on the slopes of a ridgetop.

The new buildings would be part of a large overhaul of the former Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary campus, a 127-acre site with academic buildings and residences in the unincorporated community of Strawberry covering prime hillsides overlooking the bay.

On June 9, the county approved developer North Coast Land Holdings’ plans to build 337 residential units that would include 70 low-income sites plus a 150-unit residential care facility, a daycare, fitness center and 944 parking spaces. The plans call for demolishing all but 13 existing residences and to preserve open spaces on the property.

But 40 of those market-rate units in 25 buildings are too close to the ridgeline known as Chapel Hill, “effectively blocking views of the Bay from many vantage points,” according to the lawsuit, filed July 6 in Marin County Superior Court by the Strawberry Residents for Sensible Development. The plaintiffs, who are also suing North Coast, argue the county’s decision violated both environmental laws and local plans governing future development… (more)

CA, deregulated housing bills, Economy, Housing, Planning, Politics

BUILT ON PROMISES, MANAGED BY CONTRADICTIONS – PRICE OF BEING POOR – PART 9

By Malik Washington : davisvanguard – excerpt

A federally subsidized “showpiece” of San Francisco redevelopment is telling its residents that mold, roaches, ventilation failures and a reported cluster of deaths are their problem – and that their overdue rent is the city’s. Before pouring billions more into Candlestick Point, the City and County of San Francisco owes the public an independent investigation into what has actually happened at Alice Griffith Apartments.

Editor’s note. This article distinguishes among documented facts, publicly reported allegations, and reasonable inferences drawn from the record. It does not accuse the John Stewart Company, McCormack Baron Salazar, the Tabernacle Community Development Corporation, FivePoint, RBC Capital Markets, the San Francisco Housing Authority, the Office of Community Investment and Infrastructure, the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development, or any city official of fraud. It argues that the public record, as it currently stands, justifies an independent fact-finding investigation – and it identifies the specific questions such an investigation should answer.

Editor’s note. This article distinguishes among documented facts, publicly reported allegations, and reasonable inferences drawn from the record. It does not accuse the John Stewart Company, McCormack Baron Salazar, the Tabernacle Community Development Corporation, FivePoint, RBC Capital Markets, the San Francisco Housing Authority, the Office of Community Investment and Infrastructure, the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development, or any city official of fraud. It argues that the public record, as it currently stands, justifies an independent fact-finding investigation – and it identifies the specific questions such an investigation should answer.

One of those tenants, alarmed by the notice they had found waiting for them at the threshold of their own home, contacted this reporter directly. That contact is how this investigation obtained the two notices analyzed in the pages that follow, and how the pattern documented here – a landlord that moves at scale when it is collecting from tenants, and moves slowly, if at all, when tenants are asking it to protect them – came into public view. This reporter has been covering conditions at Alice Griffith Apartments at length in previous installments of “The Price of Being Poor,” published in partnership with The Davis Vanguard. The July 14 door-notice campaign is the newest, and one of the most publicly visible, chapters of that continuing record.

For months before those envelopes went out, residents of the same buildings had been publicly reporting a very different set of grievances: mold, water intrusion, ventilation failures, roach and rodent infestations, broken elevators, malfunctioning fire systems, recent roof concerns, and – most gravely – a reported cluster of approximately ten deaths since January 2026, including community activist Dewayne Gaines. Those grievances have not, to date, produced a comparable operational response from the landlord, from the property manager, or from the City and County of San Francisco… (more)

 

CA, CEQA, deregulated housing bills, food, Housing, Planning, Politics

Exclusive: Historic ‘Julia Morgan’ campus to be redeveloped a block from Marina Safeway

By Laura Wasxman : sfchronicle – excerpt

Marina Safeway

A century after the historic Julia Morgan Building opened its doors on the Marina waterfront, the campus surrounding it is preparing for its biggest transformation yet: a redevelopment that would preserve the landmark structure, expand senior housing and bring Sequoia Living in as its nonprofit development partner.

The proposal arrives as another major redevelopment effort just a block away has become one of the neighborhood’s fiercest battles. The contrast between the two projects was on display Thursday evening at Fort Mason, where hundreds of Marina residents gathered to debate the future of the nearby Safeway site on Marina Boulevard, where a plan to add 850 homes has sparked organized opposition…

Residents leading the Safeway opposition said they are not fighting the creation of new homes, but a project they believe does not fit the neighborhood’s scale, character and waterfront setting. Just a block away, the Heritage on the Marina’s proposal for its campus offers a very different model of transformation: preserving the Julia Morgan Building, one of San Francisco’s most significant historic landmarks, while expanding an existing senior care community rather than introducing a new, glass-heavy high-rise residential complex.

Together, the two projects offer a window into a larger question confronting the Marina: What kind of change will the neighborhood accept?…

The Julia Morgan redevelopment plan represents a different kind of transformation.

Heritage on the Marina, the nonprofit that owns and operates the senior living campus, says the redevelopment is intended to modernize aging facilities, expand services for older adults and preserve a piece of San Francisco history.

The centerpiece of the campus is the Julia Morgan Building, a three-story brick landmark completed in 1925 for the San Francisco Ladies’ Protection and Relief Society. Named after California’s first licensed female architect — whose portfolio includes Hearst Castle — the U-shaped building occupies a prominent position on the 1.6-acre site, surrounded by later residential and administrative additions, including health care facilities and a caretaker’s cottage.

The redevelopment plan would preserve the Julia Morgan Building while replacing all other structures with a single, new eight-story residential building. The proposal would increase the campus’s residential capacity from its current level to 122 units while adding modern amenities and care facilities…

Carolyn Kiernat, a principal at Page & Turnbull, the preservation-focused architecture firm working on the restoration and expansion alongside HKIT Architects, said the proposal “carefully balances preservation with progress.”

“Great cities are measured by how well they care for people across every state of life,” said Sara McVey, Sequoia Living’s president and CEO. “The proposed plan preserves an important piece of San Francisco’s history while ensuring it can continue serving older adults and the Marina community for another 100 years.”…

The Julia Morgan campus redevelopment and the Safeway project have become symbols of two competing visions for the Marina’s future. Thursday’s community meeting underscored a growing reality facing neighborhoods across the city: They may have to make room for both. … (more)