San Francisco Public Press (https://www.sfpublicpress.org/category/land-use/page/4/)
Is an abundance of vacant units worsening the Bay Area’s housing crisis? That’s what some politicians have suggested. Their solution: a new tax on landlords who leave residential and commercial properties unrented. Oakland will vote in November and an S.F. measure is being planned for 2019. Vancouver, Melbourne and Paris already levy such taxes.
Cities would regain power to regulate rental housing if Proposition 10 passes in November, repealing Costa-Hawkins. But would that help or hurt the affordability crisis?
Angela Alioto points to 10-year plan to abolish chronic homeless she crafted in 2004 as a model of success that the city needs to revive. She blames the late Mayor Ed Lee for letting the plan wither and siphoning away money for other programs. Third in a series analyzing the mayoral candidates’ records and pledges on housing and homelessness.
District 6 Supervisor Jane Kim represents the city’s wealthiest and poorest ZIP codes. She has focused much of her political energy on inclusionary housing — programs mandating a percentage of apartments in new developments be set aside at below-market rates — and set a new standard by securing higher-than-normal affordability ratios on several mega-projects. On homelessness, she says that if elected mayor, she would treat it more like a public health crisis than an economic problem. Second in a series analyzing the mayoral candidates’ records and pledges on housing and homelessness.
As the father of San Francisco’s inclusionary-housing ordinance, which requires developers to build below-market-rate apartments or pay a hefty fee, mayoral candidate Mark Leno calls for mandatory higher percentages for developers building on transit corridors or city-owned parcels. He also has vowed to “end street homelessness by 2020,” in part by filling vacancies in private, single-room occupancy hotels. First in a series analyzing the mayoral candidates’ records and pledges on housing and homelessness.
California officials are taking their first, tentative steps toward requiring cities to plan for severe sea level rise that scientists now say could conceivably elevate high tides by up to 22 feet by the middle of the next century. A state-funded study recommends that local planners adopt a risk-averse approach to permitting developments such as hospitals and housing in areas that have even little chance of flooding in the coming decades.
The fall 2017 issue of the Public Press, which focused on some possible solutions to homelessness, inspired graphic designer Erik Schmitt to create informational labels he posted on single-room occupancy hotels listed as empty.
Dozens of residential hotels have rooms to spare, but it is a seller’s market, and city officials cannot force owners to rent. At last count, 4,353 people were unsheltered in San Francisco, with 1,827 empty rooms in private SROs.
Two years ago, the California Supreme Court overturned decades of land-use law by upholding lower court rulings that cities could no longer require developers to take into account the effects of climate change on their projects. That decision has unsettled public officials and planners, and critics say it will allow real estate interests to saddle taxpayers with a gigantic bill to defend against rising seas.
A city-commissioned environmental study that detailed how the Mission Bay neighborhood would be inundated by rising seas in coming decades went unpublished for more than a year while two showcase waterfront developments won key approvals from city officials and voters, a Public Press review of records shows.
