April 1, 2026 – The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has yet to initiate the 2025 application and payment process for funds authorized by Congress to help farmers afford organic certification.
Three months into 2026, the agency has not indicated when those funds might be made available. Due to rising costs of both certification and other farm necessities, it will likely result in fewer farmers pursuing certification, said Kate Mendenhall, executive director of the Organic Farmers Association.
“It’s the small farms where it really makes a financial impact,” said Mendenhall, who is an Iowa livestock farmer. “I would anticipate that farms might hold off on certifying for a few years, and we’ll probably lose some smaller farms.”
Data from the Organic Trade Association (OTA) shows an increase in organic food sales, up to more than $70 billion in 2025. But that increase is primarily from imported food. Other data points to a decrease between 2021 and 2023 in the number of U.S. acres certified organic, with many existing organic farms going out of business or dropping certification…(more)
District 1 Supervisor Connie Chan, and running against Scott Wiener, author of the sone of the most aggressive upzoning bills, said: “I am interested in doing everything we can to unlock the housing that’s already in the pipeline.”
Amid rising construction and financing costs, the tax and fee incentives adopted in 2023 by San Francisco in an effort to spur housing construction weren’t enough to reverse the decline in The City’s residential building activity, according to a new report — but without those measures, it said, the slowdown likely would have been worse.
The analysis, conducted by the Board of Supervisors Budget and Legislative Analyst at the request of Supervisor Connie Chan, examined the effects of temporary reductions in inclusionary housing requirements approved in September 2023, along with incentives that included cuts in development-impact fees assessed on residential projects.
It concluded that while fee reductions and other policy actions might have provided financial relief for some projects in the pipeline, the changes were insufficient to offset or counteract broader macroeconomic conditions largely outside city control, including high building costs, interest rates, and the slow recovery of rents and condominium prices.
“We all want to build more housing, particularly housing that people can afford,” Chan said in discussing the report. “And so how do we do that in a way that is thoughtful?”… (more)
RELATED:
Supervisor wants city voters to grow Housing Trust Fund
We are seeing a slowdown in the building and sales of homes due to a lot of economic conditions that have nothing to do with housing density or upping or carrots or sticks. It is refreshing to hear a few of the candidates running for governor mention some of the obvious moves that may be easily made to preserve the affordable housing we have rather than tear it down during this slow down when many buildings are being put up for auctions as the overly optimistic owners are losing them to the lenders.. Some of comments on that subject may be heard on this recording of a Ezra Klein interview posted on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HETwu7Kfu8
What happened to the 2024 Prop A voter-approved $300 million affordable-housing bond money? What did the voters get out of it? Does passing another bond measure make sense?
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 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?
Financialization, not demographics, caused the cost of housing to explode
Solving the housing crisis has been a central plank of the Liberal party during their decade in power, but progress has been elusive. Despite recognition of housing as a “fundamental human right” and pledges of tens of billions of dollars to housing programs, homelessness has risen and affordability has worsened.
Rising property values have impacted every corner of the market. As home prices have surged, the rate of homeownership has declined across the country, while buyers remain in debt for longer periods of time. Tenants pay higher rental costs, and building social housing is more difficult because of the cost of land.
Policymakers and economists blame high housing prices for a severe supply shortage. This line of thinking led the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) to call to double the rate of construction, to build 4.3 million new homes by 2035.
The CMHC’s proposal would increase Canada’s housing stock by 25 per cent over a decade, even though they anticipate population growth of only eight per cent, leading to “abnormally high levels of unoccupied housing units,” as the Parliamentary Budget Office observed. The CMHC’s projected payoff is surprisingly modest: they anticipate real housing prices would only decline to pre-pandemic levels.
These issues point toward a more fundamental question: What is the evidence that a supply shortage has created the housing crisis to begin with?…(more)
…I read it [The Mayor’s Upzoning Plan] Mayor Lurie. And now my readers are going to read about it too. With any luck they will share this with others as others have shared it with me. The jig, as they say Mayor Lurie, is definitely up.
There are manifold examples of horrible development and redevelopment concepts in Mayor Lurie’s Upzoning Plan, too many to detail in one essay. So, I will focus on the one that is most steeped in deception and betrayal — the Western Shoreline Area Plan amendments.
That image is just the first 9 lines; it goes on after that and there are more specifics elsewhere in Mayor Lurie’s Upzoning Plan. Honestly though, there is little reason to go any further than the page that I included above.
The Western Area Shoreline Plan policy objectives, as amended, would read — “ENSURE DEVELOPMENT IN THE COASTAL ZONE ADVANCES HOUSING AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT GOALS APPROPRIATE FOR THE LOCATION OF EACH PARCEL.”
I have already heard pushback from Mayor Lurie’s office saying, “no, no, that does not mean ‘ensure development,’ that is not why that is in there.” Oh, really? Then why the hell is it in there? It fails every credibility test to say that this amending language will not actually change coastal protections. Opening the door to coastal zone development is unpopular, frighteningly so. I get why your wrecking-ball planning office would try to hide it on page 818.
Remember that Engardio kept telling us this was all, “Fake News!”
It is not “Fake News!” Moreover, now that it is no longer hidden, please do not insult me and, more importantly, do not insult my friends, my neighbors and my community by saying you want to make this change, but the change would have no impact. It is patently absurd to risk the political fallout from such a move if the underlying amendments lacked real-world impact, insultingly absurd.
Mayor Lurie, take out the changes to the Western Area Shoreline plan that begin on page 818 and all of the other amendment provisions that emanate from it.
While I am at it, here are some other line-in-the-sand issues for me and a lot of other people, in The Sunset and beyond:
Open The Great Highway, reinstate the compromise!
Protect the Coastal Zone and Western Shoreline from upzoning and development!
Infrastructure before density — utilities, sewer, transit, water, public safety & local schools.
Small business stability — preserve and encourage a diversity of retail spaces and other small businesses, including older and more affordable storefronts.
Stop with the blanket upzoning that look for all the world like someone took a highlighter to a map in the Western neighborhoods. Upzoning and redevelopment needs to look like it was done with a fine tip brush and not a paint roller.
Mayor Lurie, we can do better than this, we must do better than this… john
Mayor Daniel Lurie’s proposal to boost housing could bring taller buildings to parts of the city, where current residents fiercely oppose them.
What was supposed to be a rally for Mayor Daniel Lurie’s proposal to boost housing in San Francisco turned into a shouting match on Thursday.
A well organized group of opponents hurled insults at nearly every speaker at Lurie’s event, much to the surprise and dismay of the mayor.
Lurie had scheduled an event on the steps of San Francisco City Hall to rally support for his “Family Zoning Plan.”
While about half the crowd came to support the mayor, the other half appeared bent on shouting him down over the proposal.
The mayor’s plan, if approved, would make multi-family homes like duplexes, triplexes and apartment buildings in parts of the city that are currently zoned only for single family homes.
The plan also reforms the city’s permitting process with the goal of green lighting about 36,000 new homes by 2031.
Lurie’s proposal could bring taller buildings to parts of the city, where current residents fiercely oppose them… (more)
The Planning Commissioners vote 3 nays and 4 ayes so the matter goes to the Board of Supervisors to approve.
And the Democrats wonder why they lost the election? They better start listening to the voters and quit telling people how to live. All the upzonoing and car removal bills have not lowered rents or added riders to the public transit system. The draconian laws are driving people out of the state. They are losing seats in congress.
All those claims of how the future is going to unravel have not panned out as predicted and there has been very little recognition of this or flexibility on dealing with the new reality.
Empty on brand new condos on Van Ness, shot on July 11, 2-25
This main SF thoroughfare once had grand houses and auto palaces. Now there’s a great bus line, but empty storefronts. Can it again be a place to live and linger?
“ In its May letter, the Van Ness Corridor Neighborhood Coalition asked for drastic reductions of some maximum heights, especially along eight blocks that squeeze between Pacific Heights to the west and Russian Hill and Nob Hill to the east. On the five blocks between California Street and Pacific Avenue, they want to cap heights at 100 feet, down from 250 feet. (Every 10 feet is roughly one story.) On the three-block stretch between Pacific and Green Street, they want 120 feet maximum instead of 350.”… (more)
What is truly amazing abut this article, is that they admit the program they already applied is not working. Fast buses on the street are not conducive to stopping and shopping or “hanging out:” Tall buildings are not being filled with retail or residents. So what is their solution? MORE OF THE SAME THING THAT IS NOT WORKING NOW!
Do these people actually believe the snake oil they are tryin to sell the public? Are there any people who do not see the little guy behind the big mask on the screen? After all Alice did return from Wonderland back to her normal home, and Dorothy did return to Kansas after her dream ended. Not many people want to live on a fantasy AI gameboard 24/7.
Our leaders are willing to try anything other than going back to what used to work before they destroyed to improve it.
Wiener’s plan to fold his bills into the budget was refused by the state parliamentarian. So… They went with option B.
Wiener pulled his bills and is pushing them onto the state legislature while Newsom takes the strange position of threatening to withhold his signature from his own budget, if the Wiener anti-CEQA bills don’t pass if we believe the latest news.
