San Francisco Public Press (https://www.sfpublicpress.org/category/neighborhoods/page/6/)
The Mission Bay campus of the University of California-San Francisco, will soon expand. Community groups are asking it to offset the impact from that and other recent development by helping pay for new transit, parking, open space and other amenities.
The vision of a future San Francisco buttressed by dikes, levees and seawalls over coming decades is being overshadowed by an increasingly accepted alternative: moving away from the waterfront. Some experts argue that physical barriers offer only the illusion of protection and that cities should accept that some neighborhoods will need to be abandoned.
State Proposition 58 aims to undo almost two decades of voter-approved state policy that has actively discouraged bilingual language education. But just as demand for bilingualism is growing, California lacks teachers, standards, curricula and reading materials.
Prop R: This ordinance would direct the Police Department to create a unit focused on making neighborhoods safer and improving quality of life.
San Franciscans will not vote for nearly three months, but big money is flowing into the fall election already. Local campaigns have spent $3.15 million, with more than half going to just six of 25 measures on the ballot.
Voters approved the Giants’ $1.6 billion waterfront development, but environmental questions linger about whether Mission Rock could be occasionally or permanently submerged as bay waters rise by many feet before the end of the 21st century.
Proposition D would make it possible for the Mission Rock waterfront development to move forward in the Mission Bay neighborhood.
Proposition I would block the construction, demolition or conversion of nearly all new, unpermitted market-rate housing in the Mission District for 18 months, giving city officials and community groups time to create a long-term plan for helping low- to middle-income people who live in the neighborhood. Projects for 100 percent affordable housing would not be affected.
Builders plan to invest more than $21 billion in offices and homes in flood-prone areas, where waters could climb 8 feet above today’s high tide by the end of this century. Land-use records reveal that the building boom, fueled by a white-hot tech economy, is moving too fast for regulators to keep pace. (Cover story from the summer 2015 print edition)
As cranes and bulldozers continue their work to build Mission Bay, residents and workers say they love the new waterfront area. Few say they have any knowledge of, nor are they much concerned about, the long-term flooding risk.
