Bay Area Land News - December 3, 2019
US / California / Bay Area News
Editorial: A rare victory over California’s housing logjam
San Francisco Chronicle
Local officials are the driving force of the state’s housing shortage, the most severe on the U.S. mainland. To the extent that the Legislature, for all its dithering, has begun to pry their jealously guarded local control from their hands, we should rejoice. The Legislature should go further in requiring cities to permit high-density development near jobs and transit in the vein of Wiener’s SB50, which lawmakers bottled up this year. SB35 has shown that even moderate restrictions on local officials’ license to obstruct housing can significantly boost the supply of desperately needed homes.
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Home price gains show signs of stabilizing in 20 cities
San Francisco Gate
Home prices in 20 U.S. cities rose more than forecast in September from a year earlier, indicating property values are stabilizing as housing demand picks up. The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller index of property values increased 2.1% from September 2018, higher than the median estimate of 2% in a Bloomberg survey of economists, data showed Tuesday. Prices rose 0.4% from the previous month. A separate report from the Federal Housing Finance Agency showed home prices advanced 0.6% in September from a month earlier, the most since January.
State’s new housing law has mixed results
The Daily Democrat
The All Souls project is one of more than 40 around the state that have used SB 35 since the law went into effect in January 2018. The law’s ambitious goal was to ease the state’s chronic housing shortage, but it has sparked an outcry from some local officials upset by the state’s usurping of their control. The law requires most cities to fast-track residential and mixed-use projects that meet certain affordability and other standards. So far, California city officials have approved or are still considering more than 6,000 homes proposed under the law, including about 4,500 in the Bay Area, according to this news organization’s analysis of anecdotal reports and city and county data.
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California Can Force Priority for Low-Cost Housing on Public Land
Courthouse News
California can force San Jose and 120 other charter cities to give affordable housing developers the first crack at building on surplus city land, a California appeals court ruled Tuesday. San Jose had argued the home rule doctrine for charter cities in the California constitution superseded a 2014 state law that makes cities prioritize affordable housing development on surplus public land. Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Theodore Zayne agreed with the city’s position in December 2016 and dismissed the core claims of a lawsuit brought by housing advocates.
Where traffic doesn’t take a day off: These Bay Area freeways see terrible congestion on weekends too
The Mercury News
When his work schedule changed a couple of years ago to include shifts on Saturdays and Sundays, tattoo artist Owen Partridge figured the silver lining would be a traffic-free commute. “I thought, ‘Oh this will be easier,'” said Partridge, whose trip to work takes him down the often traffic-choked Eastshore Freeway from his home in Vallejo to shops in Berkeley and San Francisco. But Partridge has come to learn the same lesson as countless Bay Area drivers who spend Monday through Friday slogging through some of the worst congestion in the country, and look to their weekends for relief from the grind: Traffic here doesn’t take a day off.
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Bay Area super-commuters take to the skies in planes, helicopters
San Francisco Chronicle
Every Sunday evening for eight months, Paul Spence drove his 16-year-old daughter, Hayley, to a private air terminal in Sacramento 15 minutes before her flight left. He’d walk her out to the plane, meet the pilot, and watch the preflight security briefing. Then she’d take off alone for the 45-minute ride to her specialized school in Palo Alto, where she spent the week with a family member before flying back Thursday. “Very easy, very fast, no security,” Spence said. It saved him at least 12 hours of driving time a week. Super-commuting is nothing new to Californians.
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Don’t Blame Tech Bros for the Housing Crisis
The New York Times
Can Big Tech solve the housing crisis? That’s the hope behind recent announcements by Apple, Facebook and Google, which together total $4.5 billion in grants and loans to remedy the affordable-housing crunch in California and the Bay Area. Microsoft last year pledged $500 million to relieve Seattle’s similarly stressed market. While Amazon’s opposition torpedoed Seattle’s attempt in 2018 to raise revenue for homelessness services, the company has embarked on a range of philanthropic housing ventures, including turning over a large chunk of one of its office buildings for use as a shelter for homeless families. These moves, and the public reaction to them, reflect a common presumption: Tech broke the system, so it’s time for tech to fix it. But don’t blame this economic crisis on the tech bros.
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Building Bay Area homes, one public meeting at a time
The Mercury News
Katia Kamangar earned degrees in civil engineering and business, but the challenges of real estate always appealed to her: managing projects, puzzling out the most efficient designs, and developing a consensus with communities and city councils to bring housing to the Bay Area. “I wasn’t just going to be an engineer all of my life,” said Kamangar, a native of Finland. “I found myself gravitating toward real estate.” Kamangar is now executive vice president at SummerHill Housing Group in charge of new home and rental communities in Northern California. Over more than two decades, she’s had a hand in building 7,000 homes, condos and apartments in the Bay Area.
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San Francisco News
In SF, bikes still aren’t a preferred means of travel. Can the city change that?
San Francisco Chronicle
In yet another effort to get people out of their cars, San Francisco is gearing up to install a record 100 new bikes racks a month in the coming year. How quickly the new racks fill up, however, remains to be seen. “Cyclists are frustrated,” Supervisor Rafael Mandelman said. “We have seen rack after rack for rental bikes and scooters being installed, but there are still places that have no place for a regular bike to park.” Brian Wiedenmeier, executive director of the politically powerful, 10,000-member San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, agreed. “More bike racks will lead to more people biking,” Wiedenmeier said.
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New SF tax on Uber and Lyft will fund drivers for Muni
San Francisco Chronicle
A new tax on Uber and Lyft rides in San Francisco will generate revenue to fix Muni’s chronic driver shortage, one of the biggest problems facing the agency. The measure that passed by a two-thirds vote this month will levy a 3.25% tax on most ride-hailing trips, with a 1.5% rate for shared rides, beginning in January. Rides in electric vehicles would have a 1.5% surcharge whether they are solo or shared.
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Home SF was meant to boost housing along transit. But can it fulfill its promise?
San Francisco Chronicle
Two and a half years ago, San Francisco adopted an aggressive plan to add more housing, including affordable homes, along transit corridors. Under the Home SF program, officials hoped to see 16,000 units completed by 2037. The program lets developers exceed height and density limits in exchange for including more affordable housing in their projects, and the idea was to push more projects in historically development-wary neighborhoods. But the program has been slow to gear up. Not one Home SF project is under construction and just three have been approved.
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SF advances eviction protection measure, closing loopholes in new state law
San Francisco Chronicle
Tens of thousands of San Francisco renters could soon find it easier to fend off evictions under legislation poised to be passed by the Board of Supervisors. The city’s Rules Committee unanimously approved legislation Monday authored by Supervisor Matt Haney that would extend eviction protections for vast swaths of tenants who currently don’t have them. Haney’s office said the ordinance, which moves to the full board for a vote on Dec. 10, would apply to more than 35,000 units across the city.
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Open Forum: San Francisco leaders want a new retail vacancy tax. They should fix their old, failed, retail policies instead.
San Francisco Chronicle
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors has voted to place a retail vacancy tax on the ballot next year. If it passes, it will add yet another layer of failed retail legislation on top of the old. This isn’t the first time San Francisco leaders have made this mistake. In 2006, when the economy was booming, vacancy rates in neighborhood retail were less than 5%. Rents were increasing as overall property values were trading at all-time highs.
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San Francisco has turned into a nightmare. Here's how to fix the city in the next 10 years.
Business Insider
San Francisco has turned into something akin to a nightmare. Its homeless population has risen to nearly 10,000 residents, its rents have climbed to nearly $1,900 per month, and parts of its downtown are now littered with used needles, trash, and human poop. As more tech workers flock to the city for jobs at Google, Facebook, and Uber, longtime creative professionals like artists and musicians have found it increasingly difficult to live there.
SF supervisor calls homeless crisis a ‘zombie invasion’ in 2015 email
San Francisco Chronicle
District Two Supervisor Catherine Stefani likened San Francisco’s homelessness crisis to a “zombie invasion” and compared the city to an “insane asylum,” in a 2015 email unearthed in a recent court filing against her. The email was included in an October complaint filed on behalf of her tenant, Clifton Thomas. The tenant — who lives above Stefani in her Cow Hollow apartment building — unsuccessfully sued her in August over an alleged wrongful eviction in 2016. In the new complaint, Thomas alleges that he did not receive a fair shake in court and will seek a new trial in San Francisco Superior Court Wednesday.
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Supervisor-elect Dean Preston’s big ideas, and how he plans to achieve them
San Francisco Chronicle
Supervisor-elect Dean Preston has big ambitions for San Francisco, and he hopes to shake up the status quo at City Hall when he joins the Board of Supervisors in December. He’s been hoping to do so for nearly four years — but now his time has finally come. Preston, a tenants rights activist and democratic socialist, narrowly lost the District Five seat to then-Supervisor London Breed in 2016. This time around, he beat Supervisor Vallie Brown by fewer than 200 votes.
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SF must engage, not scorn, new residents
San Francisco Chronicle
For some Bay Area residents, the depth of your roots is a proxy for your right to get involved. The logic behind this argument is easy to follow: Those shaping a community should be the residents that have seen it grow, recoil, improve and falter; only this sort of experience and familiarity can ensure you’re doing what’s best for the area. In an ideal world, this model makes a lot of sense. After all, a tall tree has weathered a lot of winters — clearly it possesses unique traits that should be studied and shared. But strong logic doesn’t always work in practice.
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242-Unit Serif & The Line Hotel Plan to Revitalize San Francisco’s Mid-Market Neighborhood
The Registry
L37,formerly Group i, a San Francisco-based real estate development and management firm, has unveiled its vision for Serif – a new mixed-use development in San Francisco’s burgeoning Mid-Market neighborhood. Comprised of 242 condominium residences, Serif will also share its space with the sumptuously hip The LINE hotel, retail and dining experiences, and the legendary Magic Theatre. A collaboration between Bjarke Ingels Group, Handel Architects, IwamotoScott Architecture and Surfacedesign, Inc., Serif illustrates the revitalization of a rapidly changing section of Market Street.
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SF agency approves 85-unit housing development on Third Street
San Francisco Examiner
The latest housing development approved by San Francisco’s former redevelopment agency will bring 85 units to the Third Street corridor right across from a Muni T-line station. Initially proposed in 2016 at 145 units with 15 percent, or 22 units, at below market rate, the development at 4200 Third St. was scaled back to 85 units with 20 percent at below market rate after community feedback and public meetings.
At the Presidio, a post for the military slowly becomes a park for the people
San Francisco Chronicle
They’re sprinkled throughout the Presidio, weary counterpoints to the increasingly fashionable scene. A prim guardhouse that looks out on Crissy Field sits padlocked and empty. The windows of four century-old brick buildings are sealed with plywood, yards away from where a $118 million park will soon begin to emerge. A small posse of empty structures rings the parade ground at remote Fort Scott, scenic but problematic. Add them all up and — 25 years after the Presidio’s 1,491 wooded acres in northwest San Francisco became a national park — at least 100 of the park’s 870 structures are vacant or have not been rehabilitated.
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South Bay News
Court says San Jose can’t make its own rules when it comes to housing
San Francisco Chronicle
Cities in California must comply with a state law that requires them to make surplus public land available for low-cost housing, a state appeals court ruled Tuesday. “The shortage of sites available for affordable housing development is a matter of statewide concern” that outweighs a city’s self-government interests, said the Sixth District Court of Appeal in San Jose. The court overturned a judge’s decision that would have allowed the city of San Jose to enforce a local ordinance that has less-stringent low-cost housing requirements, and more exemptions, than the state law.
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$3 billion in three years: Downtown San Jose investments soar
The Mercury News
In a record-setting splurge of spending, developers, investors and tech companies have gobbled up properties in downtown San Jose, paying out more than $3 billion in three years. The land rush extends far beyond Google’s head-spinning shopping spree near the bustling SAP Center and aging Diridon train station. If Google dominated the first two years of the buying binge, the last year has marked the arrival of stalwart developer Jay Paul Co., which is eyeing two major projects to create new tech campuses that would reshape the San Jose skyline and fuel downtown activity.
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San Jose, other charter cities can’t flout state housing law, appellate court finds
East Bay Times
San Jose and 120 other charter cities must follow a state law that reserves surplus public land for affordable housing, a California appellate court has found — a ruling that could have broad implications in the ongoing battle between legislators pushing statewide housing fixes and city officials fighting to retain local control. The Sixth District Court of Appeal found San Jose must abide by the state Surplus Land Act, which dictates that when a California municipality has land it wants to dispose of, it must offer up that property for subsidized housing affordable to low and moderate-income residents.
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Peninsula News
Court ruling on Martins Beach puts public access rights in doubt
San Francisco Chronicle
The bitter decade-long tussle over the right of beachgoers to access a sandy cove near Half Moon Bay took another twist this week when a state appeals court ruled that Martins Beach had not historically been public because the previous owners had charged a fee to go there. The ruling by a three-judge panel in San Francisco gives life to billionaire venture capitalist Vinod Khosla’s argument that he can legally close the only access road to the beach, a notion that has infuriated surfers, state legislators and battalions of public rights lawyers.
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New legal tangle in Martins Beach public access battle
The Daily Journal
A lawyer for a citizens’ group that wants to keep Martins Beach on the San Mateo County coast open to the public said Tuesday that the organization will appeal an adverse appeals court ruling. The beach near Half Moon Bay was bought in 2008 by Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, who began seeking to close it to the public in 2009.
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Event spotlights Menlo Park's troubled race-based housing history
The Almanac
The high-ceilinged Sequoia room at Menlo Park's Arrillaga Family Recreation Center hummed as about a hundred people in small groups of four or five sat and discussed the racial history of zoning and housing policy in Menlo Park and other communities on the evening of Sunday, Nov. 17. The event, called "The Color of Law: Menlo Park Edition," was organized by Menlo Together, a community organization that, according to its website, is made up of "Menlo Park and Peninsula residents who envision a city that is integrated and diverse, multi-generational, and environmentally sustainable."
Apartment association challenges urgency ordinance
The Daily Journal
In response to an urgency ordinance San Mateo County officials adopted to stop no-fault evictions and large rent increases in anticipation of a new state law to take effect in January, the California Apartment Association is raising concerns with the measure, alleging it makes it unclear about whether the rules apply to single-family homes and may infringe on landlords’ legal rights. In a Nov. 25 letter to County Counsel John Beiers, attorney Stephen Pahl, whose office serves as general counsel to the association, alleged certain provisions of the urgency ordinance approved by the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors in a 4-1 vote last week are illegal.
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Menlo Park: Council approves revised transportation fees for new buildings
The Almanac
In order to support new restaurants, retail spaces and child care facilities, the Menlo Park City Council voted unanimously on Nov. 19 to lower traffic impact fees for those uses, while raising fees on office space and other purposes in the city. The decision aligns with recommendations made by a subcommittee of council members Betsy Nash and Cecilia Taylor.
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LinkedIn is getting serious about eco-friendly buildings
The Mercury News
Many Silicon Valley companies want to reduce their carbon footprint, but some are doing so from the ground up. LinkedIn is using a more environmentally-friendly concrete to expand their campuses. This may not sound like a sexy concept, but production of cement, the key ingredient in concrete, contributes to 7% of global man-made greenhouse emissions, according to the International Energy Agency.
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Palo Alto delays 'urgency' law to protect renters — again
Palo Alto Online
A proposal in Palo Alto to pass an "emergency law" to protect tenants facing evictions before California's new renter-protection law kicks in faltered on Monday night despite broad political support. Instead, the council voted for the second consecutive meeting to delay adopting the urgency measure, which was proposed in a memo by Councilman Tom DuBois and Councilwoman Lydia Kou. The council's vote means that even if members approve the law on Dec. 9, it would only be in effect for about three weeks.
East Bay News
Why downtown Oakland is booming
San Francisco Chronicle
For the first time in more than a decade, Oakland’s skyline has a new office tower — and many more to come. Last month, health insurer Blue Shield of California began moving 1,200 workers to 601 City Center, a 24-story building a few blocks west of the 12th Street/Oakland City Center BART Station. The new high-rise has sweeping views of downtown Oakland, the Bay Bridge and the nonprofit’s old home, San Francisco, where it was headquartered for 80 years.
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