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Initiative to increase below-market-rate housing added to June ballot
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Related Topics: SAN FRANCISCO
SAN FRANCISCO (Map, News) - A recent petition drive succeeded in adding an initiative to the June ballot which, if passed, would increase the number of below-market-rate homes planned at two major redevelopment sites within Bayview-Hunters Point, at an $800 million cost to developers, according to city officials.
The initiative would require homebuilders to sell half of the thousands of homes planned at Hunters Point Shipyard and Candlestick Point in The City’s southeast to below-average-wage earners for below-market prices.
Volunteers linked to the Grace Tabernacle Church, nonprofit People Organized to Win Employment Rights and other southeastern groups helped collect signatures for the initiative, backed by Supervisor Chris Daly, according to organizer Lynne Brown. “We all came together with this one,” he said.
The Department of Elections ruled late Wednesday that 8,429 valid signatures had been collected — enough to qualify the initiative for the June ballot.
Michael Cohen, The City’s Director of Economic and Workforce Development, said infrastructure at the projects, being paid for by the developer, Lennar Corp., already cost $1.5 billion. Cohen said the initiative would “kill” the project if it passes because it would reduce revenue from property tax and home sales by an estimated $800 million.
An initiative on the June ballot, backed by Lennar, promises that at least one-quarter of the homes would be sold at below-market prices.
Half of the planned homes would have to be built at below-market rates if both initiatives pass, according to City Attorney spokeswoman Alexis Thompson.
Comments from Examiner Readers
1:10 AM MST on Tue., Jul. 22, 2008 re: "Housing measure may be removed from ballot"
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12:42 PM MST on Mon., Jul. 21, 2008
re: "Housing measure may be removed from ballot"
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10:36 AM MST on Mon., Jul. 21, 2008
re: "Prices to buy, rent in city climb"
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10:10 PM MST on Sun., Mar. 9, 2008
re: "Prices to buy, rent in city climb"
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10:08 PM MST on Sun., Mar. 9, 2008
re: "Initiative to increase below-market-rate housing added to June ballot"
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12:38 PM MST on Fri., Mar. 7, 2008
re: "Initiative to increase below-market-rate housing added to June ballot"
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11:09 AM MST on Fri., Mar. 7, 2008
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10:06 AM MST on Fri., Mar. 7, 2008
re: "Prices to buy, rent in city climb"
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2:01 PM MST on Fri., Feb. 22, 2008
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5:47 PM MST on Thu., Feb. 21, 2008
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4:25 PM MST on Thu., Feb. 21, 2008
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2:44 PM MST on Thu., Feb. 21, 2008
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2:08 PM MST on Thu., Feb. 21, 2008
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2:04 PM MST on Thu., Feb. 21, 2008
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12:09 PM MST on Thu., Feb. 21, 2008
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11:49 AM MST on Thu., Feb. 21, 2008
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3:39 PM MST on Fri., Feb. 15, 2008
re: "Ballot measure aims to make The City’s housing affordable"
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10:13 AM MST on Tue., Feb. 12, 2008
re: "Supervisor Daly wants half of proposed Treasure Island housing to be affordable"
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Examiner Reader said:
Helpful hint - if SF keeps taking from people who work hard to provide cheap housing to unwed mothers, pimps, drug dealers, and gangsters, the flow from the city of families with children who can actually afford to pay taxes will become a torrent instead of merely a fast moving river. Send them to Newark or Union City where the locals are quite happy to have them and subsidize them.
4 agree | 3 disagree
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Examiner Reader said:
Great, keep giving to the poor and taking away from the hard working people. Why don't we stop helping the poor and see if they can get jobs and start being productive parts of society.
8 agree | 4 disagree
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Examiner Reader said:
San Francisco has been furiously building housing for the last 5 years and I don't believe the rental/home prices have come down significantly in that time.
2 agree | 2 disagree
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Examiner Reader said:
moratorium on development, office building, and strip malls throughout the state, until each major urban area builds 100,000 new rent-controlled rental units. Simple, and it solves the issue immediately.
7 agree | 5 disagree
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Examiner Reader said:
Make it all rental, rent controlled housing and put a hold on any for profit housing. IN essence freeze the real estate give-away, and force developers to build what we need 100,000 new rent controlled units.
5 agree | 8 disagree
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Examiner Reader said:
Yes, Native San Franciscan, Daly and the progressives really want mentally ill Marxist renters, drug addicts, blah, blah, blah. What an antiquated product of right-wing radio you are! In fact, the conditions on the street are the result of Reagan Revolution that decimated our cities. Wait and see what neo-neocon Schwarzenegger's new cuts do to us.
4 agree | 6 disagree
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Native San Franciscan said:
Chris Daly and the other progressive pinheads don’t give a damn about affordable housing or San Francisco. All they care about is keeping San Francisco so run down and dilapidated that the only people who will want to live here are mentally ill Marxist renters, drug addicts, panhandlers, etc. The progressive housing agenda is geared toward that goal. The Bayview, Jobs, Parks and Housing Initiative is the only initiative that offers San Francisco an opportunity to make a real dent in its housing crisis. Anyone who wants to see the City better itself should volunteer on the campaign so we can send Chris Daly and the other poverty pimps packing.
9 agree | 4 disagree
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Examiner Reader said:
Ending rent control in San Francisco would be the fastest way to empty the city of its workers. Look out for Proposition 98, from the same folks who destroyed California schools with Prop. 13! www.saverentcontrol.net
5 agree | 6 disagree
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Examiner Reader said:
If we eliminate rent control, the complex nature of the housing markets, both owned and leased, will work themselves out to everyone's advantage. Perhaps, however, it strikes me as overly simplistic. I moved to San Francisco in the late 70's and I've witnessed a number of real estate booms in the city. None, to the best of my knowledge, ever considerbly brought down the prices in either market. However, whenever the state and local economy tanks, the prices come down subtantially and likewise, after major earthquakes, when there's an exodus of people out of California, real estate price come down considerably to reflect that change, too. While there are certain commodities which can be very well-served by the marketplace, the marketplace has also brought us the current state of home mortgages, healthcare, airlines, energy utilites as so forth.
18 agree | 13 disagree
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Dede said:
Eliminating rent control promotes investment in existing rental stock and redevelopment of existing stock. Eliminating condo conversion restrictions does much of the same. Reducing the risk to developers in the entitlement process will also facilitate development - and reduce the cost of housing. Eliminating inclusionary housing will reduce the cost of housing. (who do you think pays for BMR units? your neighbors). If the city want's to buy down units to make them affordable - great. Otherwise it is a tax on every other buyer - and I mean every because the cost of new housing raises the price of existing housing.
29 agree | 28 disagree
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Examiner Reader said:
It doesn't matter how much "affordable" housing you try to create, supply will never meet demand. There are only 2 places that a large percentage of the 300 million Americans want to live, San Francisco and Manhatten (I know I'll get heat over that one...get over it..its true). So San Franciso currently houses less than 0.3% of the US population. As I said, supply and demand will always be out of balance. Herr Daly can do what ever he likes but there will NEVER be enough "affordable" housing. I am not saying its right or wrong, but "it is what it is." Get over it and try and make life bearable for those who actually do what it takes to live here. I would vote for the $2 billion to go toward MUNI and improving the 38 Geary rather than build a bunch of cheap apartments to house the lucky thousand who win a lottery of some sort.
34 agree | 19 disagree
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logicbomb said:
Seven and Reader: New units are not subject to rent control, so your economic theory that rent control is curtailing development in San Francisco is null and void.
35 agree | 20 disagree
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Garwood said:
Hey Josh Sabatini (author) - thanks for giving the landlords of San Francisco to get on the bank wagon and raise the rents. Gee wiz, everybody must be raising the rents, so why shouldn't I? If you story is supposed to be a pubic service of some sort, well, you blew it, really blew it. When I get my rent increase letter from my landlord, I'll be sure to think of you. Landlords that might be on the fence as far as raising rents will go for it now after you've given permission to every penny pinching landlord is the City to do so. Where is the statisical data supporting your claim? Thanks for nada, Joshole.
30 agree | 33 disagree
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Examiner Reader said:
Expensive housing? Thank the bureaucrats who impose rent control. Rent control is nice for the few that live under it but the widespread and long term cost is a housing market that is artificially manipulated to the point that costs in both rent AND sales continues to rise. Rent control has been studied to death and always is proven to make matters worse. Erasing rent control would be the fastest method and the cheapest method to create housing for everyone.
40 agree | 23 disagree
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Examiner Reader said:
I meet a married couple recently who were enjoying the life of "affordable" housing despite both working with good companies and making good money. The reason? THEY decided to have three kids before planning their life and so, the kids cost was deducted somehow from their gross pay which then qualified them for Burbank Housing (low rent / public subsidized) rentals. So, your support of "affordable" housing is a farce. I'm not paying taxes just to make life easy on people who chose to have kids they cant afford. They also told me that Burbank Housing cannot "discriminate" against people coming out of prison and only view the persons income. So, "affordable" housing also is used to support ex-cons. Your tax dollars at work, folks.
32 agree | 18 disagree
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Seven said:
The only way to get more rentals on the market is to end rent control.
25 agree | 17 disagree
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M.S. Jackson said:
Don't be too alarmed, the Examiner makes this sort of announcement in an effort to bolster rents (Examiner is pro-landlord all the way) about once every two months regardless of the state of rentals in S.F. Do your thinking on this subject for yourself - check Criagslist.
34 agree | 17 disagree
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Examiner Reader said:
the problem with this initiative is that it is classic ballot-box planning and offers a one-size-fits-all solution to complex planning problems. the city without question needs more family housing. the question is how to provide this housing in the context of detailed neighborhood plans. the measure for example allows builders the right to dramatically reduce rear yard open space (to 10'). this would undo much of the actual detailed planning work that has occurred in the market-octavia area and undermine other efforts to trade density for a broad range of desired community benefits. the affordable housing defined in this measure incidentally will be for households with close to $100k/year incomes. i wouldn't necessarily argue that incentives are not needed to produce housing for households in this range, only that voters should consider both what is being traded and what other benefits they might prefer out of such an exchange.
52 agree | 42 disagree
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logicbomb said:
A) Just because you make the housing affordable, doesn't mean it will be affordable to live there. Residents will still need to pay for a car (plus bridge toll, regardless of whether they work in SF or East Bay), bus, or ferry to get to work. B) Making 50% of the housing affordable is a sweet way to deter the 50% market units from selling. And the Island is already a hard sell.
55 agree | 51 disagree
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