SF News Activists Blast ‘Developer Dirty Bomb’ And Lack of Racial Equity In SF’s Housing Element Plan The phrase “developer dirty bomb” entered the chat surrounding the San Francisco Housing Element debate at Thursday’s Planning Commission meeting, as affordable housing activists argue the soon-to-be-final draft of the plan gives short shrift to racial equity.
SF News Housing Element Drama Update: SF Still Set To Be 22,000 Units Short on State-Mandated Goal A looming state requirement that San Francisco present plans to build 82,000 housing units is starting to hit crunch time, and right now our best-case scenario is stuck at shy of 60,000 units.
SF Politics Supervisors Spend Five Hours Haranguing Over Mandated 82,000 New Housing Units, But We Might Actually Hit That Goal? It’s not surprising that the SF Board of Supervisors spent nearly five hours debating a state-mandated housing requirement that the city build 82,000 new housing units by 2031. What is surprising is that we might actually achieve the goal.
SF News DMV Lot On Fell Street Floated As Affordable Housing Development Site The state's property at the tip of the Panhandle in SF, currently home to the city's busy DMV field office, is a prime development site that's been discussed before — and Supervisor Dean Preston says the state should step up and "partner" with the city to allow it to become affordable housing.
SF Politics Final Local Ballot Measures Called: Prop M Vacancy Tax Wins, Prop E Affordable Housing Measure Falls The dust appears settled on the final two undetermined SF ballot measures, and the vacant homes tax has passed, while both of the dueling affordable housing ballot measures are shot down.
SF Politics What’s the Deal With These Dueling SF Affordable Housing Measures, Props D and E? The competing affordable housing measure Props D and E have incredibly similar wording, but their big-money backers are polar-opposite coalitions of tech investors on one hand, and trade unions on the other.
SF News Several Bay Area Cities Using Highly Improbable, Silly Proposals To Meet State Housing Goals on Paper As a state deadline for robust housing plans looms in January, some cities are submitting plans that just don’t pass the smell test, with implausible features like building on top of churches and grocery stores whom they did not even ask about this first.
SF News Depressingly, There Are Enough Vacant Housing Units In SF to House the Homeless Population Eight Times Over Did you know that there are actually tens of thousands of housing units, rentals included, that are sitting empty on any given day for one of a variety of reasons, and that putting even a fraction of these into service as supportive housing could solve the homeless problem overnight?
SF Politics This Winter and Spring Could Be a Chaotic Free-for-All For Developers If SF Can't Get Its Housing Element Approved A local housing activist just called San Francisco out on a rather alarming error — city officials and planners thought they had until May 31 to get the all-important revision to the general plan's Housing Element approved by the state, but the deadline is actually January 31.
SF News Newly Proposed Rezoning Could See 34,000 New Housing Units Come to SF’s Western Neighborhoods The SF Planning Department recently released another reworked draft for its state-mandated “housing element” plan, which will now suggest rezoning parts of the city to accommodate 34,000 additional housing units — a big jump from the 22,000 units previously outlined.
SF News Former Hemlock Tavern Site, Now 54 Units of Empty Housing, Finally Moving Forward After Condo Conversion Compromise More than 50 units of housing have sat empty for two years on property that used to be the home of Hemlock Tavern, but they can now be occupied, as the Board of Appeals rules on a developer who said they were building apartments and then switched to condos.
SF Politics In-Fighting Over Affordable Housing at City Hall Escalates With New Lawsuit; Meanwhile Newsom's Office Launches Unprecedented Review of SF Policy A housing nonprofit aligned with Mayor London Breed, the San Francisco Housing Action Coalition, has now filed suit in what seems to be a last-ditch effort to keep a competing charter amendment about affordable housing off the November ballot.
SF News Sup. Dean Preston Wages Fight Over HUD-Related Evictions of Longtime Tenants at Western Addition Complex The bureaucracy of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the likely profit motives of one management company are once again running head-first into San Francisco politics and this city's chronic housing shortage.
SF News Huge New Housing Development With 45% Affordable Units Approved for Former Transit Hub Site In SoMa The block-sized property in SoMa that became home to the temporary Transbay Transit Center in the last decade will become a three-tower complex with the tallest tower around 40 stories.
SF Politics Peskin Seeks to Expand Rent Control to New Construction In SF Via Charter Amendment The SF Board of Supervisors will be seeing two proposed amendments to the city charter introduced at their Tuesday meeting, both of which set up fights between the progressive bloc of supervisors and Mayor London Breed over housing.
SF News Report: Hundreds of Below-Market-Rate Units Sit Empty, Despite Waiting List of More Than 20,000 A new City Hall report shows more than 300 below-market-rate housing units are sitting empty, thanks to red tape and a pandemic market where market-rate housing has gotten cheaper.
SF News Sup. Preston Seeks To Close Rent-Control Loophole That’s Leading to 182% Rent Increases An affordable housing nonprofit ironically called HumanGood has announced 182% rent increases for some tenants thanks to a HUD loophole, but Supervisor Dean Preston has introduced an ordinance to prevent this.
SF Politics Judge Tosses NIMBY Legal Motion Against Sunset 100% Affordable Housing Project The “No Slums in the Sunset” crowd is slumming it today, as their restraining order to stop the project was thrown out, but they’re still suing the city to prevent a 100% affordable housing project at 26th Avenue and Irving Streets.
SF News Much-Maligned ‘Monster In the Mission’ Could Be Reanimated as 100% Affordable Housing A controversial mega-development at the former 16th and Mission Burger King site is being re-proposed as all affordable housing, with the new nickname “Marvel of the Mission.”
SF News Showdown Looms Between SF Board of Supervisors and Sunset Residents Angrily Opposed to Affordable Housing One of San Francisco's least-dense neighborhoods, where the city probably should have been pushing for more multifamily and affordable housing for decades, is the site of the latest showdown between city leaders and NIMBY residents.
SF News 111-Year-Old San Jose Building To Be Moved Sunday — And Will Become Affordable Housing Units Having now seen two pandemics, the four-unit Pallesen apartment building at 14 East Reed Street in San Jose is expected to be relocated to its new address tomorrow — less than a quarter-mile from its current one.
SF News Stonestown Galleria Parking Lots Could Become 2,900-Unit Residential Village The owner of the Stonestown Galleria mall property has been conducting workshops with nearby neighborhoods to discuss a future development that could create a new neighborhood out of what is now just 30 acres of surface parking lots.
SF News Proposal From Architecture Company Would See the Now-Closed Albany Bowl Turned Into Housing Project The site that once belonged to the much-loved Albany Bowl — which had housed the iconic business since 1949 — might become a multi-unit housing project; 21 of the apartments in the 207-unit proposal are expected to be affordably priced.
SF News 'Below Market Rate' Housing Units In San Francisco Found to Be Above Market Rate Right Now With apartments going for bargain prices around San Francisco in what will likely be a short-term dip in the rental market, so-called below-market-rate (BMR) housing is tied to other metrics, and renters can find better deals in the open the market right now.
SF News Massive New Development Announced In Fillmore District on Site of 70s-Era Affordable Project A huge, 2,515-unit residential project — one of the largest ever to be proposed or built in San Francisco — may be on its way to the Fillmore/Western Addition, and it's being driven by the same church group that built 382 units on the same site 47 years ago.