Denounce the Yimby disruption: An open letter to Sen. Wiener

By Tim Redmond : 48hills – excerpt (includes video)

Community leaders ask author of SB 827 to distance himself from the Yimbys who shouted down a community coalition trying to hold a peaceful rally… (more)

Sign a petition to denounce the disruptors:

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Learn what you don’t know about SB 827 and other pending legislation

Saturday, April 28, 10 AM
100 Larkin St, SF Main Library, Koret Auditorium – SB 827 and Beyond:
 Coalition for San Francisco Neighborhoods will sponsor a forum on the Scott Wiener legislation that is shaking up the state of California. This will be a great opportunity to learn the real facts behind SB 827 and other controversial attempts to change the way California cities are developed. Find out why people want to protect the local planning process now controlled by our local communities. Speakers: Art Agnos, Former SF Mayor; Zelda Bronstein, Former Berkeley Planning Commissioner; Calvin Welsh, Affordable Housing Advocate; Sophie Maxwell, Former SF Supervisor. Co-sponsors include: West of Twin Peaks Council, Noe Neighborhoods Council, SF Neighborhood Network, Van Ness Corridor Neighborhoods, Stand Up For San Francisco, Livable California. Please come and bring your friends!  Please RSVP as seats are limited.

Faster track for transit-friendly housing

editorial board : sfchronicle – excerpt

BART’s oft-delayed trains look downright speedy next to the painful pace of housing development around its stations. Take the affordable-housing complex Casa Arabella, the second phase of which broke ground on a parking lot near Oakland’s Fruitvale Station last week. The occasion, as The Chronicle detailed, arrived nearly a quarter-century after plans for the area transit village took shape.

Housing around BART stations and other mass-transit hubs, as it turns out, isn’t so different from housing throughout California: disdained by surprisingly plentiful, powerful and vocal constituencies and therefore in all too short supply. And yet neighborhoods served by train stations are among the most logical places for high-density housing development that won’t compound traffic and pollution.

Promising new legislation by Assemblymen David Chiu, D-San Francisco, and Timothy Grayson, D-Concord, seeks to address the relative scarcity of BART-accessible housing by requiring the system to adopt zoning standards that promote residential development and forcing cities to go along with them. The bill, AB2923, also would mandate that developers devote at least 20 percent of projects to affordable housing and, in a potentially counterproductive concession to organized labor, pay union-level wages… (more)

Chiu is aligning his political future with Wiener’s. They appear to be taking their marching orders from the YIMBYs and their developer backers instead of listening to their constituents.

Chiu’s AB2923 would force development on BART parking lots. Wiener’s SB 827 and its cousins, if passed, will impose state zoning on all of California’s local governments. Both are extremely unpopular with citizens around the state and neither of these bills have been vetted by their constituents, or the local governments they are being imposed upon. Cities and counties around the state are opposing SB 827.

After the last decade of government by developers, we have no less traffic, cheaper housing, or happier citizens. We have more workers with longer commute times, thousands of displaced people living on dangerous crime-ridden streets, and the highest cost of living in the world. Our local businesses are closing and the disruptive on-demand delivery industry is at a crisis point, as delivery services do not perform as promised. The effects of the entire SMART plan need to be evaluated before we continue down this path.

If you oppose dense stack and pack development, attacks on private vehicle ownership, and/or the state takeover of local jurisdictions, you may want to vote for some new representation in Sacramento when you get the chance. Stay tuned for details on how you can fight back.

RELATED:
Lawmakers introduce transit development bill for BART stations

Taraval “Improvements” coming to Taraval and how you can comment on them

The Supervisors to contact about this plan are:
D-7 Supervisor Eric Mar: Eric.L.Mar@sfgov.org
D-4 Supervisor Katy Tang:  Katy.Tang@sfgov.org

Hello Supporters of Keeping Our L Taraval Stops:
Here are some of the “Improvements” coming to Taraval and how you can comment on them. 

Many of you have : seen the signs posted on various corners and the big electric signs flashing that changes are coming.  We wanted to update you on he details so you will know what to expect on Taraval Street and where you may go to comment on them:
http://stopsfmta.com/wp/4-tep-projects/taraval/

1.  Stop Removal:  Over the objections of a large portion of the Taraval Community, on February 25, 2017, SFMTA is going to remove the following eight L Taraval stops:
•    inbound, towards downtown: Taraval at 24th & at 28th (Post Office stop) Avenues; and Ulloa at 15th Avenue;
•    outbound, towards the ocean:  Ulloa at 15th Avenue; Taraval at 17th (Safeway stop), 22nd (Library stop), 28th (Post Office), & 35th Avenues.
•    Massive community support for the Taraval and 17th Avenue stops where Safeway is located convinced the SFMTA Board of Directors to try to keep the inbound stop heading downtown, so for now it is not being removed.

2.  Clear Zones & Lost Parking:  Starting on January 23, SFMTA began rolling out  the creation of “clear zones” (i.e., no curbside parking) and the loss of the following 81 parking spots on Taraval at L stops where concrete boarding islands will be built in 2018:

… (more)

 

Impacts on the housing market from transit corridors – rising rents.

Oped: by zrants

The astronomical rise in property values is caused by removing height limits and zoning restrictions. Add massive evictions and foreclosures and create a new disruptive quasi-hotel business for transient citizens and you can easily create a housing shortage to boost property values even higher.

Forcing people to give up their cars is one of many tools the new building industrial complex uses to force dense stack and pack housing on a population that hates it. City Hall uses your tax dollars to market their vision of your future by trying to shame you into accepting what they have plan to do to you.

Don’t you want to live in a cool condo over a coffee shop with a gym and a cleaning service instead of in a single family home with your own private yard and garage? No? What’s wrong with you? Are you a NIMBY? No one deserves parking, a car, a yard, a view, or protection from shadows and wind.

Don’t you want a nice clean loud obnoxious sports arena instead of a wide open space next to the bay? We’ll decorate a big public yard with public art and plants, and you can hang out in the shade of our arena. We may even let you sit down and rest if you can afford one of our expensive new brews or tasty treats. Just don’t think of parking anywhere nearby. Bring your smart phone so you can figure out how to get in and out of the area. If you don’t have one, stay home.

Back to the bike paths: The anti-car brigade claim their priority is taking dirty cars off the road to improve air quality, but, the car industry is transitioning into clean electric vehicles. It is all the demolition and dirt from construction sites that is clogging our lungs and pores and making us sick, not the cars. Do you want to breath all those obnoxious fumes while pedaling down a clogged street full of angry motorists and bus drivers? I don’t.

The climate control argument is a lie. Scientists say the main thing wrong with electric vehicles is that there are not enough of them. They want to see more electric powered vehicles and 4 or 5 story homes independently powered by today’s solar technology. Every tall building that goes up puts more shadows on more rooftops and keeps those us dependent on the public power grid system. As many people have stated, follow the money.

How Atlanta’s greater emphasis on biking impacts the housing market
By Charlotte Sears : bizjounals – excerpt

… Turns out, there are just as many reasons to love biking as an adult. It’s flexible and affordable, it’s great exercise, it’s good for the environment and it makes you feel like a kid again. It’s no surprise, then, that biking has emerged as a favorite alternate mode of transportation for many Atlantans who are tired of spending so much time behind the wheel, stuck in traffic.

What is perhaps surprising, though, is how a love of biking can translate into higher values for properties along or near a bike path. A 2011 study from the University of Cincinnati found that homebuyers there were willing to pay a premium of up to $9,000 to be within 1,000 feet of their 12-mile rails-to-trails line.

Studies from other U.S. metropolitan areas have come to similar results. While we don’t have that sort of quantifiable data for Atlanta, we are noticing rising interest and values for homes in close proximity to trails. Whether it’s the long-distance, Georgia-to-Alabama recreational route of the Silver Comet Trail or the around-town connectivity of the Beltline, Atlanta’s bike paths are becoming the latest sought-after address… (more)

Once again bizjournals calls it. This time in Atlanta. Watch the rents go up along those transit corridors as the government removes parking and forces people onto public transit the developers build higher buildings and raise the rates, claiming they need to put more people on the public transit system, which now includes bike lanes. Makes no sense but, that is what they claim.
Not surprising to those of us who saw it coming when they started claiming that parking isn’t free and parking is a privilege not a right. We knew that parking was step one in the developers’ plans to create scarcity so they could raise prices.

First they took our street parking, then they took our off-street parking, and now they want our back private yards and views. Next they will want us to leave so they can tear down our homes to rebuild the little boxes we refer to as stack and pack housing. And they call us NIMBYS because we object to being displaced?

‘Driving miles’ is best measure of new development

Opinion By Curt Johansen and Jeremy Madsen : sfgate – excerpt

For more than 40 years, California’s signature environmental law — the California Environmental Quality Act — has helped safeguard our natural lands and protect community health. Now it’s time to modernize some elements of the law to strengthen its effectiveness and make our communities even better places to live. Fortunately, the Brown administration is following through with some long-overdue fixes that deserve broad support.

Critics of CEQA have protested that the environmental review the law requires for major projects often adds unnecessary costs, time and uncertainty, while unfairly empowering project opponents. As representatives of nonprofit organizations committed to responsible, sustainable infill growth in our cities and downtowns, we see the continuing value of CEQA for giving the public a voice in project analysis, requiring more careful decision making, and encouraging project developers to mitigate avoidable impacts where feasible.

But we also recognize that CEQA can unduly penalize urban-oriented projects over outlying, auto-centric projects when it comes to evaluating impacts on traffic — an analysis that too often provides project opponents with leverage to defeat projects or scale back their environmentally friendly elements. Currently, an infill project in downtown San Francisco, for example, might be subjected to protracted litigation and concessions to widen streets and accommodate even more traffic, despite its optimal location in a walkable, bikeable area with transit close by. Meanwhile, a new subdivision on open space or farmland that generates long-distance car trips, air pollution and crushing regional traffic can get a free pass, all because traffic in the immediate area isn’t affected.

This perverse result has to change, and the Brown administration is taking action…

As leading developers and advocates of infill projects throughout California, we recognize that this proposed reform will remove one of the most common roadblocks used to stop smart city-centered development, while requiring outlying projects to account for the regional traffic they cause… (more)

This plan was developed by lobbyists working for big developers, banks, and the pubic transportation industry, and the anti-car non-profits, and sold to the legislators as a method to “encourage” people to move into stack and pack housing in densely populated cites by penalizing people who don’t.

Nato Green explained how this works in a recent article:  What on earth does an assemblyman do? 

The Greenest Building Is One That’s Already Built

 Jerri Holan : sanfrancisco.urbdezine.com – excerpt

If the biggest threat to human survival is climate change, then American construction is probably the industry most responsible for causing it.  Every new construction site represents the climate being changed, the environment being degraded, energy being consumed, and irreplaceable natural resources being used.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Statistics Center, 48% of America’s greenhouse gas emissions come from the construction and operation of buildings.  That’s almost twice the amount of emissions that come from cars, trucks, and airplanes combined.  While the industry and transportation sectors each consume about 26% of our energy, the construction sector uses 48%.   And, according to National Association of Homebuilders, one 2,000 square-foot home uses up to 1.5 acres of forest and for each ton of Portland cement produced, one ton of CO2 is emitted into the atmosphere… (more)

Tishman gets ride on Central Subway

J.K. Dineen : bizjournals.com – excerpt

Big SoMa office project to track rezoning

Tishman Speyer has filed an application to build a 700,000-square-foot office complex in western SoMa, the first large development seeking to piggyback on San Francisco’s rezoning along the Central Subway.
The 97,000-square-foot parcel at 598 Brannan St. is owned by the Hearst Corp., which has used it to store and maintain San Francisco Chronicle delivery trucks and newspaper racks. The parcel, on the northeast corner of Brannan and Fifth streets, is directly across the street from the San Francisco Tennis Club. The property is assessed at $10.2 million…

(more)

The first of many developers who take advantage of the  transit corridor deals which remove height limits and other impingements on the development options. Watch the environmentalists caught in the developers’ web.

How Can On-Site Carsharing Have the Best Environment for Success?

PRNewswire-USNewswire : execdigital.com – excerpt

SAN JOSE, Calif., June 28, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The Mineta Transportation Institute (transweb.sjsu.edu) has released its newest peer-reviewed research report, Residential On-Site Carsharing and Off-Street Parking Policy in the San Francisco Bay Area. This research investigates the current practice of on-site carsharing and the associated parking standard changes from the perspective of three key groups – building developers, carsharing service providers, and local policymakers. This report is the first half of a two-part series on parking policy. The principal investigator was Charles Rivasplata, Ph.D., in close coordination with Zhan Guo, Ph.D., Richard Lee, Ph.D., David Keyon, and Luis Schloeter. The free 64-page report is available for PDF download from transweb.sjsu.edu/project/1001-1.html..

Dr. Rivasplata said, “Based on interviews with 15 carsharing stakeholders, we identified major factors contributing to the relative success or failure of on-site carsharing programs. In general, the service has been well accepted by developers, planners, and service providers as a way of reducing parking demand and expanding local carsharing markets. However, despite the success of carsharing there is a clear gap between on-site carsharing programs and off-street parking standards, and between on-site carsharing programs and carsharing business operations.”… (more)

In the case of San Francisco, most of the city is not high density, though that is the argument the SFMTA uses. They base their data on studies and plans for development that was planned but not yet implemented due to the economic downturn, that most experts expect to continue for a number of years. The major dispute SF residents have with SFMTA is that their programs do not address the conditions residents are dealing with today.