SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. — Sen. Scott Wiener’s effort to give cities like San Francisco a clearer path to cut ties with PG&E stalled this week after the Senate Energy, Utilities and Communications Committee failed to advance SB 875, legislation aimed at reforming the state process for creating local public utilities.
SB 875 would have sought to unrig what supporters described as a broken California Public Utilities Commission process that prevents cities like San Francisco from leaving PG&E and forming their own public utilities. The bill was the first of its kind to pass even one committee. It aimed to reform procedures at the California Public Utilities Commission to allow cities that wish to exit PG&E to establish their own public utilities while providing more affordable and reliable energy to residents…
In 2019, San Francisco began trying to exit PG&E, but in the years since, it has faced repeated delays at the CPUC due to what supporters called a broken process rigged by private utilities, especially PG&E. The current valuation proceeding was filed with the CPUC in July 2021. Even with a strict 180-day timeline required by law, PG&E has successfully drawn the CPUC process out to more than four and a half years… (more)
Electricity and water requirements prompt council vote for temporary ban
Oakley, a city in Contra Costa County, has become the first municipality in the Bay Area city to impose a temporary ban on new data centers.
The Oakley City Council’s unanimous vote for a 45‑day moratorium halts all new land‑use applications for data centers, giving officials time to evaluate their long‑term impact, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. The ban can be extended in phases for up to two years, allowing the city to craft zoning and environmental rules before the next wave of proposals arrives.
City Attorney Derek Cole said the measure will allow Oakley to “study, deliberate and determine the acceptable scope” of future development. The move follows public opposition to the Bridgehead Industrial Project, where developer JB2 Partners withdrew plans for a data center near Highway 160 after residents raised concerns about power and water consumption.
Council Member Shannon Shaw emphasized the need for a deliberate approach, noting that the city wants to “do it right” before committing to large‑scale infrastructure…(more)
How likely is Scott’s appetite for SF land going to help him win votes for his next big leap to Washington? How mad are the voters over the treatment they got from him in Sacramento?
For California’s local governments hoping to have some say over where and how large apartment buildings get packed near major transit stops, it’s crunch time.
Last fall, state lawmakers made it legal for developers to build mid-rises — some as tall as nine stories — in major metro neighborhoods near train, subway and certain dedicated bus stops.
But the final version of Senate Bill 79, which goes into effect on July 1, offered local governments plenty of wiggle room over the where, when and how of the new law.
With the summer deadline rapidly approaching, cities across the state are starting to wiggle…
The move took advantage of a set of escape clauses written into the state law: Transit-adjacent areas that already allow at least half of the housing required under SB 79 can hold off on changing the rules until a year after the next state-mandated planning period.
For Los Angeles and much of Southern California that’s 2030…(more)
Why is San Francisco rushing to do what other cities are putting off till 2030?
The top contenders vying to replace Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi in Congress took the stage at San Francisco’s Sydney Goldstein Theater for a debate moderated by Political Breakdown host Scott Shafer and KQED’s Sydney Johnson. The candidates fielded questions spanning domestic and international policy, offering voters a glimpse into their priorities and leadership style.
The field for Congressional District 11 includes San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan, former congressional aide and software engineer Saikat Chakrabarti, and State Senator Scott Wiener… (more)
The map that adds heights and density where it was already added and plans were drawn up to stabilize the gentrified neighborhoods that were designed by the community to protect what needed protecting:
Added base height limits by Scott Wiener’s SB 79 in 2025. This will take away any hope Scott had of dividing and conquering the city. He has now touched every district in SF with his density bills and anti-CEQA actions. Base heights starting at 95′ going down to 85′ around the BART stations and trains and for some reason around General Hospital? 85′ on the piers? No exit plans or any emergency options will be left to anyone on the east or west side of San Francisco the way they are now configured on the west side.
After three years of labor and argument, San Francisco passed the Family Zoning Plan in December. It lifted 50-year-old restrictions on building heights and densities across many neighborhoods, including the Sunset, Richmond, and Marina Districts.
But the plan avoids many other neighborhoods considered “priority equity” areas where residents are more likely to be low-income renters than in other neighborhoods. The Tenderloin is one of the city’s lowest-income, for example, and Chinatown, the Mission, and the Bayview are home to minority populations that at various times in SF history have been subject to restrictive racist policies and redevelopment.
But the city’s decision not to loosen building restrictions in these neighborhoods doesn’t mean they’re off-limits. Thanks to a new law from SF’s own state Sen. Scott Wiener, whose earlier work also led to the Family Zoning Plan, select parts of south and east neighborhoods, including the Bayview, Mission, and Excelsior, must be unlocked as well.
The law, SB 79, also calls for changes to parcels in Potrero Hill, along Guerrero and Valencia Streets, and in other areas that are not designated for equity protection.
SB 79 requires California cities to make housing easier to build near major transit lines. In many cases, this new round of zoning only means small-bore changes, such as making room for a single new home near St. Mary’s Playground in the Outer Mission. But some parcels will be zoned for more, such as 20-plus units next to the former Candlestick Park site or at the corner of Cesar Chavez and Guerrero Streets. In all, planning documents call them “modest zoning changes.”…
The new rules will then make their way to the Board of Supervisors, which must approve them by July 1.
If SF doesn’t meet that deadline or tries to modify the rules, SB 79 could trigger more dramatic upzoning across much more of the city. “Even if they are against this type of legislation, supervisors don’t really have a choice,” says Zach Weisenburger, policy analyst at SF-based Young Community Developers… (more)
2019 cranes were everywhere. There are very few today.
If you were herein 2019 you may remember a lot of tall cranes in the air all over the city. Dozens of office towers were being built due to the belief that they would be needed for the next tech wave. It hit San Francisco with a bang but fizzled out when AI came to town and started laying off tech workers. Vast amounts of square footage built to meet the “imagined demand” sit idle. The only game in town now is buying and selling over priced real estate. And the Mayor wants to cut that revenue under the familiar guise of incentive to grow the down town again. Isn’t this a familiar tune?
So much for politicians’ predictions, and response to reality when their dreams and aspirations do not go as planned. Instead of changing their strategy when reality pokes holes in their theories, they go charging full steam ahead and digging ever bigger holes in their budgets. When their funds run out they go screaming to the voters demanding more money and higher taxes to fulfill their flawed schemes.
Now SF Planning claims we need more density to provide for more housing, even though people are losing their jobs to AI and leaving the city at a very fast pace. Realtors report that the new wealthy buyers only want single family housing and many prefer to live and work in mansions. They are shying away from office downtown offices and condos. Aaron Peskin was right when he said, most people want the housing that developers want to demolish, not what the developers want to build.
Housing is much like transportation. Everyone in our friendly city wants other people to live in crowded quarters and take the bus.
Many cities are demanding a pause in the enforcement deadlines so they can figure out what they are supposed to do with all the complicated contradictory bills that their state legislators cannot explain. Senator Wiener has considered holding off on the deadline, so why is San Francisco in such a rush to upzone more now?
Gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer said that if elected, he would be much more amenable to setting limits on artificial intelligence and the companies developing it than his predecessor.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has taken a somewhat skeptical view of regulating artificial intelligence, but in an in interview with The Examiner on Monday, Steyer said he wants to protect state residents “from the potentially dangerous impacts of a new technology.”
“It’s really important that we think about this in terms of protecting people’s livelihoods, protecting people’s safety,” he said.
Steyer laid out his general approach to AI in a plan he released last week, making him the first gubernatorial candidate to offer a comprehensive program for the technology. In the interview, he got into some of the specifics of his plan.
The billionaire and climate activist told the Examiner he opposes the deployment of driverless big-rig trucks; believes humans need to be in the loop with automated systems that can make decisions involving such things as health or safety; and thinks AI systems should be tested before they are deployed, including for whether they might encourage suicide or self-harm… (more)
Hosts Jesse Alejandro Cottrell and Emily Dreyfuss with real estate reporter Emily Lande, look at where the San Francisco housing market stands in 2026 — and who it’s actually working for. One of the biggest takeaways repeated numerous times is: The preference is for single family homes, but they aren’t being built.
As Mayor of San Jose, the third largest city in California, I learned first-hand what it took to get new housing built. I took on the special interests and slashed taxes and fees on new housing, and now
thousands of new homes are under construction. Under my leadership, the city cut permitting times dramatically and created a pathway for infill projects that complied with zoning to get permits without fear of bogus environmental
COST OF LIVING INDEX BY STATE
lawsuits — all to get new affordable homes built faster. The city is now using new technology in our building department to process the approval of low-cost backyard cottages faster, and we are on track to make major reforms to our building codes that would make it easier to build starter homes… (more)
Wiener may have gone too far if he wants non-YIMBY votes to get him to Washington. Going after the coast, farmers, and continuing to boost his trickle down theory in spite of the facts, may prove to be his undoing.
The lack of affordable housing is a complex problem. And every complex problem, as the saying goes, has an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. In this instance, free market fundamentalism has long provided one such answer — the notion that invisible economic forces will solve affordable housing crises, if we only step aside, wait patiently, and let them work their magic. It has, of course, never worked out that way; but free-market apologists have always found a way to blame the world for its failure to conform to mechanistic economic models. This has kept their totalizing theories roaming the earth like zombies, providing intellectual cover for their policy application, and forever eluding the grave where bad ideas go to rot. And in recent years, these zombies have gotten a makeover and started to pop up in unexpected places.
The Bay Area is a land hospitable to technoutopianism and invigorated by the perennial search for hacks and technological fixes for life and its vicissitudes. It should then come as no surprise that it was here that the current iteration of the YIMBY movement came to be. Folks dismayed by the region’s high housing costs looked around and rediscovered a simple technical solution: deregulation. In their account, land use controls had inhibited housing construction and constrained supply, leading to higher housing prices. This intuitive connection was made by reference to single-family-home districts and to a history of exclusionary zoning practices— a move that gave the movement’s deregulatory platform the semblance of a progressive plea. Thus framed, YIMBYism gained traction and was promulgated across the country in the name of social equity by useful zealots and self-interested cynics, willfully or blissfully unencumbered by the weight of historical counter-evidence, the contingencies of context, or the nuances and limitations of contemporary housing research. Before long, the old wine of deregulation started showing up in YIMBY bottles at the table of housing policy debate and, increasingly, it was the only drink on the menu…
Several assumptions undergird the deregulationist push to override local land use controls and to undermine, in the name of housing affordability, the influence of communities in the development of their neighborhoods:
Lack of affordable housing stems from a lack of overall housing supply;
An increase in overall housing supply will make housing affordable to those in need; and
The relaxation of land use regulation provides an effective means to stimulate the new construction…
The political appeal of peddling deregulation—a straightforward policy solution that just happens to redound to the benefit of the real estate sector—has been plain to see (as it ever has). We hope that the new administration will part ways with its predecessor and take the less expedient path of tackling the affordability crisis as it exists in the real world and not as real estate interests and its YIMBY mouthpieces would like it to.
California peach farmers are expected to take a multimillion-dollar financial hit and lose vast quantities of crops after Del Monte Foods plans to permanently close two state plants.
Del Monte-owned plants in Modesto and Hughson will permanently close and leave hundreds of workers unemployed by April 7, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification that was filed earlier and obtained by SFGATE. Hundreds of employees will lose their jobs, including 571 general laborers at the Modesto plant alone.
But the California farmers who grow fruit for the factory are also taking a financial blow. Farmers in the Central Valley, as well as Yuba and Sutter counties, face a $550 million revenue loss from 20-year contracts to grow peaches with Del Monte, according to the Sacramento Bee. Many farmers haven’t made substantial profits from the orchards that Del Monte asked them to plant just a few years ago. Now, about 75,000 tons of peaches will likely go to waste, lcoathe outlet added.
“Two-thirds of the growers are going to be, basically, just left out to dry,” Sarb Johl, a farmer in Yuba County, told the Sacramento Bee… (more)
If you failed to notice the negative effects of re-zoning all of California yet, this may catch your attention. Food shortages may be coming as farmers leave their farms. If re-zoning farmland and raising taxes on farmers to get them to leave their farms for AI power production and housing concerns you, please make that an important conversation to have with your state and federal representatives and the candidates who are running to replace them. NOW IS THE TIME TO ACT !
