Tag Archives: Senator Wiener

Housing, Planning, Politics, Transportation

Can Bay Area Political Leaders Solve Climate Change?

By Marc Joffe : cato – excerpt

Passing laws, adopting regulations, and spending money to fight climate change are popular activities for both elected and unelected officials in the San Francisco Bay Area. But since they only govern 2.3 percent of the U.S. population, their ability to turn the tide on greenhouse gas emissions is limited. Instead, their costly and coercive policies drive up the area’s cost of living and help drive out residents.

In a previous post I described some of the high cost, low ridership Bay Area transit projects that raise local sales taxes while replacing only a handful of car trips. Since I last wrote, we have learned that San Francisco’s new $2,000,000,000 Central Subway is afflicted by serious water intrusion issues, making the travel experience less appealing for the roughly 1,000 passengers that use the Chinatown station each day.

More recently, local lawmakers have declared war on natural gas, an energy source that used to be popular with some environmentalists because it burns more cleanly than other fossil fuels. But now the intention is to fully embrace electricity even though California is unwilling to add nuclear generating capacity and lacks the enormous number of solar panels and windmills needed to fully power the state…(more)

Housing

Wiener supports giant project pushed through with no neighborhood input

By Tim Redmond : 48hills – excerpt

I went to State Sen. Scott Wiener’s virtual town hall tonight, and nothing he said should have surprised me. But for the record, he said that the “best thing that’s happened” in San Francisco and California politics is the rise of the Yimbys.

He also expressed strong support for a giant project in Potrero Hill that is a case study in what can happen under state legislation he sponsored.

Wiener encouraged everyone attending (and because of the way his office controlled the Zoom room, I was unable to count the people online) to join a state or local Yimby group.

“I encourage you to get involved in the Yimby movement,” he said.

And he kept saying that cities like San Francisco and areas like West Los Angeles “haven’t built enough housing.”

For the record: Cities right now don’t build housing. Developers do… (more)

Not surprising that people want to recall Wiener.

 

Uncategorized

Stop misleading housing bills

By Linda Koelling : smdailyjournal – excerpt
Editor,

If you think that Senate bills 9 and 10 are the answer to the affordable housing needs, I invite you to consider the facts. Housing affordability and homelessness are said to be among the most critical issues facing California cities. The Legislature continues to introduce housing bills that remove local zoning control from cities and evade citizen input.

The results of these bills will create significant, environmental impacts. Where will the funds come from for municipalities’ ability to provide and maintain the additional infrastructure, and public services required for water, schools, sewer treatment, roads, police, fire? Can we expect an increase in taxes to meet the requirements for the additional infrastructure needs? If so, then what is the use of having affordable housing when the cost of living in the area will be too high for anyone to handle. It makes no sense!…

SB 9 AND SB 10 FACTS:

SB 9: Ends single-family zoning;

SB 9: Allows 4-6 units of housing on single-family lots;

SB 9: Allows the splitting of every single-family lot in California;

SB 10: Allows up to 10 units per parcel in any residential area (job-rich, transit-rich) ;

SB 10: Allows local councils to remove any land use initiative without the vote of the people;

SB 9 SB 10: Cause mass removal of our trees;

SB 9 SB 10: Eliminate yards and permeable soil protection;

SB 9 SB 10: No affordable units required;

SB 9 SB 10: No infrastructure upgrades required; and

SB 9 SB 10: No CEQA environmental review required.

Who are our leaders really representing? No on SB 9 and SB 10

Linda Koelling, Foster City

The letter writer is the former mayor of Foster City…(more)

SB9 is the brainchild of Senator Atkins and Senator Winer gets credit for comping up with SB10. Together they will spell the death knell of the single family homes and neighborhoods in our state and make the security of home ownership more difficult for anyone who is not lucky enough to own a home yet. SB10 will remove citizen’s ability to enforce ballot initiatives that their local authorities don’t approve of. And this doesn’t event take into account what the Assembly is cooking up for us.