It could have been the plot of a science fiction novel, or perhaps “Rip Van Winkle.” Thirty-five years after its first meeting, the Community Congress awakens in 2010 to find its city and the world transformed — and perhaps a new reason for being. Many things in San Francisco have changed since the first such gathering in 1975. The first Community Congress was held that June and is credited for several major political changes to the city, including rent control and district elections.
Category: Housing
Posted inHousing, Labor, Land use, Law & Justice, Open Government
Lawsuit seeks details on failed $100 million CalPERS investment
The public has been slow to learn about details surrounding controversial investments made by the California Public Employees’ Retirement System. Now a public-interest legal group is suing CalPERS to ensure key documents related to a failed $100 million investment come to light.
Posted inEconomy & Business, Government & Politics, Health, Housing, Labor, Land use, News, Treasure Island
Homebuilder Lennar uses federal taxpayer funds to balance its books
In 2006, things were looking good for Lennar, America’s second-biggest homebuilder. That year, before the U.S. housing market’s epic collapse, the Miami-based giant pulled down $15.6 billion in revenues and closed sales on 29,568 homes. The ink was just drying on a massive and potentially lucrative deal to transform Treasure Island with new housing complexes, and the well-connected Lennar already had secured a deal to develop the Hunters Point Shipyard that the Navy was turning over to San Francisco.
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Posted inHousing, Land use, News, Treasure Island
Treasure Island residents face choices for relocation
Residents of Yerba Buena and Treasure islands are divided on the relocation plan city officials have presented to the public. While many Yerba Buena residents expressed concern over maintaining their quality of life through more than a decade of construction, Treasure Island residents tended to express more support. Read more…
Posted inCity Hall, Housing, Land use, News, Treasure Island
Financial upside for developers is long-term and risky, city says
The developers of Treasure Island stand to earn a potential 20.6 percent return on their investments if the 18-year, phased construction plan and land sales proceed as they predict. That does not include possible future real estate sales.
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Posted inCity Hall, Housing, Land use, Neighborhoods, News, Treasure Island
Through two mayors, connected island developers cultivated profitable deal
In the next six months, local officials and a consortium of private developers will begin to finalize legal papers for Treasure Island’s future as a high-density eco-city. Renderings of the gleaming towers, parks and gardens suggest harmony and community. Yet the promise of an urban Treasure Island, one of the most complex and risky redevelopments in San Francisco’s recent history, has for more than a decade been wrapped up in a process driven by power and influence. The mayor got neartotal control. Political friends got plum jobs and contracts. Critics were exiled. City and state conflict-of-interest laws were waived. Independent inquiries and the will of voters were nakedly rebuffed.
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Posted inHousing
Supes, mayor agree on new tenant protections
Mayor Gavin Newsom plans to support a proposal passed by the Board of Supervisors that protects tenants from arbitrary eviction in non-rent controlled residences facing foreclosure.
Posted inHousing, Neighborhoods
Environmentalists, preservationists face off in Parkmerced
KALW Public Radio reporter Alison Hawkes took a closer look at Parkmerced, where owners are pitching a 30-year plan to transform the site into a low-carbon community. For developers, it’s a test to see if “green” can stand for both environmental sustainability and the color of money. Hawkes found the drive for a clean new future is clashing with the past.
Posted inHomelessness, Housing
VA launches initiative to assist homeless vets
A collaboration between the Veterans Administration and the Department of Housing and Urban Development seeks to end — and prevent — homelessness among veterans.
Posted inHomelessness, Housing, Social Justice
Shanty towns rise in the Central Valley as poverty levels climb
Fresno, Calif. has the highest levels of concentrated poverty in the nation. In some neighborhoods, nearly half of all residents are living below the federal poverty line. Over the past year, many of those poor residents have slipped out of housing completely. Now shanty towns are springing up along the railroad tracks, an image that recalls shanty towns of a different era: the so-called Hoovervilles of the Great Depression. KALW’s Thea Chroman reports.