How a Plan for San Francisco’s Housing Crisis Creates Yet Another Crisis
››San Francisco is in crisis. With rent prices skyrocketing past Manhattan’s, many San Franciscans are being forced to relocate outside of the city.
“Each year 60,000 residents move out, while 70,000 move in,” noted Gil Kelley, the San Francisco Planning Department’s director of citywide planning.
Teachers, city workers, bus drivers and even some techies simply cannot afford to live in the city.
“I pay $1,400 to have a closet and sleep upright with my surfboards,” quipped one (relatively lucky) Mission resident.
To address the crisis, the City Planning Commission proposed the Affordable Housing Bonus Program at a Jan. 28 meeting. The goal of the initiative is to incentivize developers to “set aside 30% affordable housing onsite at or below market rate” by lifting height and density restrictions on new buildings as well as opening up many new sites for potential builds. The hope is to create a huge number new units open to all income brackets.
However, many current San Francisco residents see this plan as a death sentence to their communities. The map displaying demolition targets all across the city had many residents worried about losing their current homes. Others opposed the idea of high-rises taking the place of mom-and-pop shops that are staples of San Francisco culture.
“If such a plan is passed, it will make it in the economic interest of owners to kick out merchants,” Tess Walborn of the Haight-Ashbury Merchants Association said.
Gathering in front of City Hall before the meeting, residents of the Community Tenants Association, the Haight-Ashbury Merchants Association and more called to strike down the plan.
“I can imagine a possible world where we as a community decided to give up some of our city’s charm and history and beauty and culture to make room for some of our more vulnerable residents, some of the new people coming into town, and deal with this crisis of affordability. But I think we’d have to be pretty convinced that we were actually going to get results, and that we weren’t just building units that were going to be tax shelters or short term rentals or luxury units. Instead it seems like we’re going to give up the store — literally — so that developers can make money. Instead we ask that the commission strike it down so we can come up with something with real community input.” —Deepa Varma, SF Tenants Union
Despite sharing the goal of affordable housing, those pro and con could not engage in diplomatic discussion. Supporters of the plan view the opposition as stubborn, greedy San Franciscans unwilling to sacrifice their antiquated vision of the city in order to provide housing for those in need. On the other side, residents see the planning commission and their supporters as pawns of big developers.
Interestingly enough, it is another proposal that will be the determining factor of whether the AHBP would be a step toward affordability or a give-away to developers: Supervisor Jane Kim’s charter amendment to raise the requirement from 12% to 25% affordable housing on new buildings. If this passes in June 2016, and a poll by the Tenants and Owners Development Corp. suggests 71% approval, the AHBP would be more of a benefit to developers than to low-income renters.
Proponents of the plan believe developers simply won’t build any new housing with a 25% affordable housing requirement unless they are incentivized by the bonuses on the plan like 35% increased density and the two extra story allowance.
“Twenty-five percent of zero is zero,” said Sonja Trauss of SF Bay Area Renters Federation. “A lot of people think that the pro-housing people are anti-affordable housing, but we’re pro-building.”
One massive new project San Francisco has already approved for building indicates otherwise. Forest City’s four block ‘5M’ project in the Mission includes 40% affordable housing.
After seven hours of public comment, the commission voted 4–2 to postpone the proposal until Feb. 25.
Whether it passes or not, more must be done to control the cost of rent and ensure San Franciscans a place to live. Despite the unfortunate context of the public comment and the fear that motivated it, the recent gathering at City Hall was a goldmine for new ideas to combat the crisis.
One Noe Valley resident suggested that housing for new tech workers should be built near the Google and Apple HQ, respectively in Mountain View and Menlo Park, as the cities have the space and public services to accommodate them.
“If Muni’s not working now, how can we be planning for new residents?,” SF native Dan Merer said. “This is a boom time and they don’t have the money to hire more drivers. The South Bay, which is creating all these jobs, aren’t even beginning to meet their end of the deal.”
Trauss suggested creating new units simply by lifting subdivision restrictions on existing properties.
“We have this crazy system where we protect the one-unit all over the city, we can’t even divide them in two,” she said. “It’s easier to make a giant addition onto your house than to divide it into two units.”
This would help current residents struggling to pay their rent as well as creating housing for new residents.
But could the biggest change be a simple shift in how the city views “middle” and “lower” income?
Currently, the mayor’s office classifies middle income as anyone making 140–200% of the AMI (Area Median Income). When did 140% or more become the middle? This highball number pushes actual middle-income residents into the lower income bracket and leaves no thought to those making less, not to mention the massive homeless population.
Adopting a more rational definition of middle income should be the first step to addressing the housing crisis.
