A Housing Conversation with Sen. Scott Wiener
On Friday, June 7th, TechEquity Collaborative, Palo Alto Forward, SV@Home, Housing Leadership Council, SPUR, Silicon Valley Community Foundation, Peninsula For Everyone and the League of Women Voters of Palo Alto held a conversation with State Senator Scott Wiener about regional housing policy at the Lucie Stern Community Center in Palo Alto, CA.
Senator Weiner spoke with a crowd of over 150 event attendees about the controversial Senate Bill 50, providing a historical context of the statewide housing crisis, local control issues, and the critical importance of developing housing near jobs and transit.
SB 50, if passed, would boost housing density near transit hubs and job centers. On May 16th, State Senate Appropriations Chair Anthony Portantino announced that SB 50 was being held for the year, but would be eligible for a vote in 2020.
Wiener framed SB 50 as the answer to the state’s 3.5 million-home deficit, which he said is the result of a “systematic” downzoning of the state in the 1970s-1980s. These zoning regulations made it illegal to build apartment buildings in 75% of the state, including wide swaths of San Francisco and Los Angeles. Zoning that only allows for single-family homes essentially bans affordable housing and income diversity, Wiener said.
“You’re putting up a sign that says ‘If you can’t afford the $3 million average single-family home in Palo Alto or the $2 million average single-family home in San Francisco, you’re not welcome to live here,’” Wiener expressed. “Zoning has always been viewed as a purely local concern, and while I understand that as a former local elected official, it simply no longer works.”
According to Wiener, California local governments have wielded too much power over the development process; in some cases, local councils have denied and delayed housing projects to the point where they are never built. SB 50 would “do a re-balancing” of power between local government and the state.
“This isn’t about blaming cities. City council members have one of the hardest jobs on the planet,” Wiener said, “But local control is not biblical. Local control is a good thing where it leads to good results.” Under SB 50, developments would still be reviewed by cities’ architectural review and historic resource boards, and would still defer to safety, demolition, design, and historic standards set by the local municipality.
To prevent displacement, SB 50 wouldn’t allow properties to be torn down within seven years of a tenant living in it, or within 15 years of an Ellis Act eviction. The Ellis Act allows landlords to evict tenants if they are taking their properties off the rental market.
The bill would not allow property owners to shred single-family homes to turn them into multi-family homes, Wiener said, noting that the assumption that the “entire city would be demolished and rebuilt” was far from the truth. “It’s going to be very gradual over time,” Wiener said.
Wiener asserted that the current system for evaluating cities for their housing production, the Regional Housing Needs Allocation, is a broken system that allows affluent communities to avoid obligations to develop housing.
Weiner cited Beverly Hills as an example, which has a whopping allocation of three housing units for an eight-year period. Cupertino, which Wiener said has welcomed “endless Apple expansions but not much housing,” is up to pace with its RHNA requirements. Wiener said that opposition reflects the assumption that “housing is a punishment, that bad and naughty cities should get the housing.”
“Housing is not punishment, in my view. Housing is a good thing,” Wiener said. “It’s one of the things that everyone needs. So instead of framing it about cities meeting their [meager] goals, instead I think it’s really about if we’re going to build 3.5 million homes, where is it sustainable and ideal to build them?”
In a series of questions from the audience, one question focused on the impact tech has had on the housing crisis and role to play in developing solutions. Scott Wiener replied:
“I hear that ’tech causes these problems and tech needs to solve it’ all the time. I personally think we ALL caused this problem. Tech did not create land use rules, tech did not ban apartment buildings in 75% of California, tech never said it should take 5 years or 10 years to approve a project, tech did not do any of those things. We did those things.
“Over 50 years, we as a community made these collective decisions to underfund transit, to underfund affordable housing, to not build enough housing, and to make it hard to build housing. Of course, any tech partner in the corporate community has a role to play, but we all have a role to play together.”
Wiener then went on to share how tech companies like Facebook are building housing and that corporate responsibility lies more in paying their fair share of taxes. These taxes would support the critical infrastructure our region and state so desperately needs.
Overall, the event was a major success in bringing the community together with our elected representative to address the challenges, progress, and opportunities needed to address the housing crisis across the state.
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