San Fran is a tiny city. It is already massively dense. Very few large lots—Pelosi has one—most are small. Homes are built within inches of each other. To build more apartment units—NO single family homes, you must tear down a 2-4single family homes, you must tear down a 2-4 story apartment house. Then replace it with a 20 story apartment.
Of course the narrow streets would have to be closed—jammed with the new residents. But why build more new housing units when the current residents are fleeing the city? Businesses are leaving. This is not a good place to live—and even drug addicts will shortly be able to have city government provide them with “safe places” to OD and die.
The State wants taxpayers and developers to waste their money on tens of thousands of new housing when tens of thousands of current residents are leaving—that is how a socialist economy works.
State to investigate San Francisco’s slow pace in housing development
By Adam Shanks, SF Examiner, 8/9/22
In a clear repudiation of The City’s snail-paced progress on housing, the state will audit the various obstacles San Francisco imposes to development, the department of Housing and Community Development announced on Tuesday.
The move represents an escalation in the simmering conflict between the state of California and the city of San Francisco over the latter’s housing policies, which critics charge have stymied the construction of much-needed new homes in The City.
The Housing Policy and Practice Review of San Francisco is the first of its kind, according to HCD.
The inquiry will be headed by the Housing Accountability Unit, which was created by Gov. Gavin Newsom last year to hold cities accountable for complying with state housing laws.
Why a city in such need of new housing can’t seem to build it has increasingly dominated the political discourse in San Francisco.
The investigation comes as San Francisco scrambles to draft a state-mandated Housing Element, which requires an adequate strategy to develop more than 80,000 new homes by 2031, and new housing production has slowed to a near standstill.
The City submitted its draft Housing Element to the state in May. On Tuesday, HCD sent city officials back to the drawing board and outlined the plan’s deficiencies in a lengthy letter.
Among the draft element’s numerous issues, its timelines should be shortened, HCD noted in the letter. The department called on The City to justify how heavily its assessment of housing needs includes projects that are in “the pipeline.” The state also demanded the City’s plan include an analysis of its permitting process.
“While the element includes some information about the permit process and processing time…a complete analysis must evaluate the processing and entitlement procedures for potential constraints on housing supply, cost, timing, financial feasibility, approval certainty and ability to achieve maximum densities,” the letter states.
The announcement also comes on the heels of HCD’s admonishment of the Board of Supervisors’ much-debated “fourplex” legislation, which was ultimately vetoed by Mayor London Breed. The legislation would have allowed up to four units of housing on every lot in San Francisco, but critics, including Breed, argued that the bill was weighed down with so many conditions that it would have led to little or no new housing.
In announcing its review of San Francisco’s housing policies, HCD noted the notoriously long wait times for project approvals compared to other major cities.
“We are deeply concerned about processes and political decision-making in San Francisco that delay and impede the creation of housing and want to understand why this is the case,” HCD Director Gustavo Velasquez wrote in a statement. “We will be working with the city to identify and clear roadblocks to construction of all types of housing, and when we find policies and practices that violate or evade state housing law, we will pursue those violations together with the Attorney General’s Office.”
The state’s nine-month Housing Policy and Practice Review will be done in collaboration with the U.C. Berkeley Institute of Urban and Regional Development, HCD announced.
Breed quickly welcomed the review and pledged to cooperate.
“For years, San Francisco has made it too hard to approve and build new homes. That must change,” Breed wrote on Twitter.
The City’s Housing Element is due by Jan. 31, 2023. If it does not meet that deadline, it could face penalties, including disqualification from state funding.
Sen. Scott Wiener, a former San Francisco Supervisor and hero to YIMBYs across California, also praised the state review.
“The days of SF & other cities flouting state housing laws are over. Accountability is here,” tweeted Wiener, an architect of the state legislation that allowed up to a duplex on any lot zoned for single family homes.
