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  #21  
Old Posted Oct 17, 2020, 9:52 PM
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Pedestrian Pedestrian is offline
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Originally Posted by the urban politician View Post
Creating new housing doesn’t always entail new ground up construction. Subdividing homes into apartments, adding basement or attic units, etc are examples. Allowing small one story shacks with minimal amenities and lesser code requirements is another one. I know that sounds “Third World” but it’s better than sleeping on the sidewalk.

I don’t know about SF, but in Chicago subdividing your home or creating accessory apartments is basically illegal. Prior to 1952, this was commonplace, people had stronger property rights back then and were doing this without fear of getting in trouble with the city.

The other problem is the stringent credit requirements of getting an apartment these days. That is an unintended and ironic product of overly tenant-friendly laws pushed by progressives in cities. I actually think that creating a more neutral environment where landlords could quickly regain possession of their apartments at minimal cost when they had a trouble tenant would make the entire rental industry relax their standards and rent out to more people with a poor credit history.
SF several years ago realized the value of so-called "inlaw units" and legalized them although there were already a lot of illegal ones:

Quote:
San Francisco In Law Units
By DANIEL BORNSTEIN, ESQ.

With a swelling population and housing shortage, the City understands that many properties have space that which is not being used to its highest potential. This spawned legislation paves the way for San Francisco In-Law Units.

Enter Ordinance No. 162-16, which allows the construction of Accessory Dwelling Units, known popularly as ‘in-law units’, ‘secondary units’, or ‘granny flats’ Citywide in areas that allow residential use.

These pint-sized units are additional units added to a property inside the envelope of the existing building. Typically, these unite are developed in an underutilized area such as a garage, lower level store area, attic space, etc.

There is a host of benefits to building an in law unit we’ve outlined on our sister site at SFInLaw.com . . . .
https://bornstein.law/san-francisco-in-law-units/

Actually, I suspect there were already so many illegal ones in every really appropriate space that making them legal hasn't changed much.

SF also is a national leader in funding rehabbing of older buildings by non-profit developers. For years now developers of new housing have been forced to either build onsite "affordable" housing or contribute to a fund to do it off-site. Currently the "fee" for off-site development is:

Quote:
Affordable Housing Fee: $199.50 per square foot of Gross Floor Area of residential use, applied to the applicable percentage of the project:

Small Projects (fewer than 25 dwelling units): 20% of the project’s Gross Floor Area of residential use
Large Projects (25 or more units), Rental: 30% of the project’s Gross Floor Area of residential use
Large Projects (25 or more units), Ownership: 33% of the project’s Gross Floor Area of residential use
https://sfplanning.org/project/inclu...019-fee-update

This fee, of course, raises the cost of market rate housing so one has to wonder whether or not it does more harm than good. But it does build a lot of housing that becomes part of the "affordable" program, currently 253 buildings: https://affordablehousingonline.com/.../San-Francisco
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  #22  
Old Posted Oct 18, 2020, 7:09 PM
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Let me establish one point at the beginning of this post: I'm a certified YIMBY and favor lots of new market rate housing development for all the good it does.

But that said, to specifically target the homeless, I believe San Francisco and other cities need more of this sort of thing:

Quote:
San Francisco’s Largest Supportive Housing Development



Episcopal Community Services of San Francisco (ECS) and Mercy Housing have been selected to build and run San Francisco’s largest supportive housing development for formerly homeless people. The [256 studio apartments in a] two-building development to be built near 7th and Mission streets will provide permanent homes for up to 256 households experiencing chronic homelessness, with 100 of these new units earmarked for formerly homeless seniors age 55 or older. The City of San Francisco’s selection panel recommended the ECS/Mercy team to exclusively negotiate a ground lease for the site near 7th and Mission, based on a detailed proposal submitted in response to a competitive Request for Qualifications.

The housing element of the development will be fully covered by public funding services, a bond backed construction loan and tax credit equity. Construction is set to begin in January 2020 [it is under construction now] with a goal of 100% occupancy in spring 2022.

The development will be a national model, bringing together multiple best-practice elements to help San Francisco’s most vulnerable, chronically homeless neighbors achieve housing stability, improve health outcomes, and lead stronger, more independent lives. In addition to housing and on-site case management, this community will be the new permanent home for the Department of Public Health’s (DPH) Homeless Services Center, which includes dental services and a specialized Street Medicine program. The City’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing’s (HSH) Homeless Outreach Team (HOT) will also be headquartered here.

With prime Mission Street frontage and over 5,000 square feet of ground floor commercial space, the new 7th and Mission development will also be the spectacular new site of ECS’s CHEFS workforce development program and an affiliated foodservice social enterprise. Since its founding, over 1,000 formerly homeless and very low income students have participated in the CHEFS program: A free, five-month training program that provides instruction in the technical and professional culinary skills in high demand in San Francisco’s booming food service industry. Combining classroom instruction, case management, in-kitchen hands-on training, and internships at local restaurants or institutional kitchens, CHEFS changes lives. Students with a prior experience of homelessness develop the skills and the confidence to gain and sustain employment, improve their financial stability, and make homelessness a thing of the past.

At the new site, CHEFS will finally have its own purpose-built, state-of-the-art training center with a dedicated teaching kitchen, abundant institutional food storage, classroom space, and offices for instructors, case managers, and vocational specialists – a place to inspire pride, build dreams, and find support. A robust revenue-generating culinary social enterprise will be co-located within the space, offering CHEFS students a period of transitional employment in catering or commercial meal preparation, deepening their workplace readiness in a supervised setting. Some commercial frontage has been designated for a café or retail space, offering high quality, nutritious prepared meals for sale to the neighborhood . . . .
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  #23  
Old Posted Oct 20, 2020, 12:27 AM
yaletown_fella yaletown_fella is offline
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I agree almost everything she was quoted as saying regarding NIMBYs putting a chokehold on supply. But there are some important things she didnt address.

The number one priority is we should aiming to provide housing for working people (or people working part time for low wages or between jobs) who are living in unsavoury shared living situations.

Sharing a bathroom and kitchen with 5 other strangers in some rooming house is much closer to sleeping under a bridge, in my experience, than having the mental sanity and dignity of your own small efficiency studio apartment.

People should also not lose their right to a studio apartment if they begin to thrive and save money, they should not be forced to deplete their savings.

We need to be realistic and realize that not everyone has the ability to become a software engineer or trades worker. At some point we need to accept that AI is absorbing work, wealth is being transferred upward at an unprecedented rate. A sales tax/program cut funded UBI, negative income tax or direct cash subsidy for rent is the fairest solution.

It seems too many resources are lavished on people who choose to waste away their government assistance on drugs and alcohol while responsible but unlucky/unprivileged people who work dead end full or multiple part time jobs and try to be frugal but are still priced out of a basic small studio apartment are kicked to the curb and told to suck it up and share a place with strangers. Ive been in a shared living situation like that, and it's so demoralizing.
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  #24  
Old Posted Oct 20, 2020, 12:50 AM
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The only thing that will save San Francisco is to revert to pre-war zoning.
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  #25  
Old Posted Oct 20, 2020, 1:18 AM
jtown,man jtown,man is offline
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Does anyone else think our large cities that have seen massive pressures on their housing markets will be dramatically lessened with Corona?

I saw where only 14-17% of offices are currently occupied in downtown Chicago. This is suicide. My girlfriend's company, which has an office in downtown Norfolk, will *not* be renewing their lease for their office. They have around 35 employees. This will happen all over the nation and cause a domino effect of massive proportions.

We will be begging for gentrification in the years to come if my worst fears come to life.
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  #26  
Old Posted Oct 20, 2020, 3:43 AM
mhays mhays is offline
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It's really hard to say what the effect will be on offices. So far we mostly have anecdotes and moderate trends, not major trends. We'll know way more in a year. My current sense is that office space needs will shrink a little (not a lot) as some companies go to a heavy WFH model. This will be a problem for development of course. A saving grace might be a reversion to more spacing between desks. But we really don't know what trends will be permanent vs. temporary until after most people have been vaccinated.

PS I watched some football today. The people in the stands were shown with maybe 50% wearing masks effectively. It was like a dimwit convention. That's probably a more risk-taking sample than most, but it doesn't make me confident that the RE market will be post-Covid anytime soon.

But now for housing. We REALLY don't have much clue what the situation will be in two years. On one hand, the need to be close to work will almost certainly be reduced...fewer place-centered office jobs, and less traffic. But people like city centers for lifestyle too. And maybe they'll pay even MORE for housing when they need to be there all day. And most people won't be 100% WFH -- people who are 50% WFH might still want proximity. I'd expect some odd practices...lots of workations for example...spend a couple weeks in another city's downtown while WFH part time for example. Try out new cities without worrying about changing jobs...to the extent that WFH becomes popular. The prevailing trend from all that? Who knows.
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  #27  
Old Posted Oct 20, 2020, 10:50 AM
jtown,man jtown,man is offline
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Originally Posted by mhays View Post
But people like city centers for lifestyle too. And maybe they'll pay even MORE for housing when they need to be there all day. And most people won't be 100% WFH -- people who are 50% WFH might still want proximity. I'd expect some odd practices...lots of workations for example...spend a couple weeks in another city's downtown while WFH part time for example. Try out new cities without worrying about changing jobs...to the extent that WFH becomes popular. The prevailing trend from all that? Who knows.
Interesting take but I think not *needing* to be close to work will be the last straw for many who are stretching their budgets as is.

However, this is why humans communicate, to hear ideas they would never come up with. I HOPE you are right.
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  #28  
Old Posted Oct 20, 2020, 5:49 PM
jd3189 jd3189 is offline
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Depending on the demographics of who’s moving to SF and other major cities in the country, a lot more micro units should be built. Whether one bedroom apartments, studios, dormitory-style, or actual micro units, those type of development would be able to house more people who are just singles and don’t need much to live.

Also relaxing zoning so that multiple families can live in one large SFH or townhouse. Things may still be expensive but not totally out of reach for most folks. In the meantime, building more units would also help lessen the load of demand in the market.

Yeah, the way I see it, micro units may be the future for our densest and more lucrative cities if you’re just a single or a couple willing to live in a small private place in exchange for using the resources of the city around you. For families and those who want to live a more communal lifestyle with roommates, a lot more 2-3 bedroom apartment buildings will have to be established, with mixed use buildings of course.

That would have to be the nature of every city’s core, with virtually no SFH homes in sight or even lower density apartment buildings.
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  #29  
Old Posted Oct 20, 2020, 7:11 PM
mhays mhays is offline
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Yes! Micros aren't for everyone, but they're the only way to develop moderate-priced housing in expensive cities. And they certainly fit for a lot of people.
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  #30  
Old Posted Oct 20, 2020, 7:28 PM
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MonkeyRonin MonkeyRonin is offline
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The problem with micro units is that they're more lucrative than larger 1-bedroom units, so given the option developers will build more of them, thus making the larger units even more unaffordable due to scarcity.

And they're not necessarily a panacea for affordability either - in Toronto, even as units have become smaller, the prices have still risen anyway (though there are of course other market conditions at play as well). The marginal cost of building a 300 sqft unit vs a 600 sqft unit isn't huge though.

If affordability and livability are the goal, it's more effective to amend zoning bylaws to allow for higher densities (ie. so developers can still get the same number of units in a building, just larger) and get rid of low-density-only zoning.
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  #31  
Old Posted Oct 21, 2020, 6:04 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mhays View Post
It's really hard to say what the effect will be on offices. So far we mostly have anecdotes and moderate trends, not major trends. We'll know way more in a year. My current sense is that office space needs will shrink a little (not a lot) as some companies go to a heavy WFH model. This will be a problem for development of course. A saving grace might be a reversion to more spacing between desks. But we really don't know what trends will be permanent vs. temporary until after most people have been vaccinated.
In the Bay Area the effect will likely be what it has always been: San Francisco will do fine while the satellite areas will suffer. In recent years a lot of businesses have been moving to Oakland, Emeryville, South SF and other places to avoid sky high downtown SF rents. If those come down dramatically, the flow will reverse.

That has been the pattern in the past. But one fly in the ointment this time is peoples' reluctance to use public transit which is vitaly important to get people into SF. If we conquer COVID in the sense of having a vaccine that works and people become comfortable with taking transit again, then I think the usual patterns will hold. I also think the move to working at home will fade. The people in the office having face time with the current C-suite will be the ones getting promoted and that will become obvious over time. And that combined with pay cuts for workers-from-home and the rest of the downside will have companies wanting to bring people back and people wanting to come back. Frankly, being stuck at home 24/7 is not such a great thing, especially when you old work site was just a bike ride away as was often the case in geographically small San Francisco.
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  #32  
Old Posted Oct 21, 2020, 6:10 AM
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Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin View Post
The problem with micro units is that they're more lucrative than larger 1-bedroom units, so given the option developers will build more of them, thus making the larger units even more unaffordable due to scarcity.

And they're not necessarily a panacea for affordability either - in Toronto, even as units have become smaller, the prices have still risen anyway (though there are of course other market conditions at play as well). The marginal cost of building a 300 sqft unit vs a 600 sqft unit isn't huge though.

If affordability and livability are the goal, it's more effective to amend zoning bylaws to allow for higher densities (ie. so developers can still get the same number of units in a building, just larger) and get rid of low-density-only zoning.
San Francisco doesn't need to get rid of low density zoning where it currently exists. The blockage on fairly dense new housing has not been due to zoning but to anti-development pressure groups able to use the Byzantine planning process to block development that is consistent with existing zoning.

Furthermore, there are development corredors--Third St., Geary Blvd, Van Ness Ave, Mid and Upper Market St--where enough new housing could be built to meet the demand for years to come if, again, developers were able to build projects that conform to current zoning without further restriction.
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  #33  
Old Posted Oct 21, 2020, 6:19 AM
mhays mhays is offline
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A lot of other factors encourage units much larger than micros. One bedrooms are often the sweet spot. You can fill the whole lot and do shoebox-shaped units one room wide at the window. That's why those are common.

A micro is relatively easy if you're replacing a bungalow with an apartment building, because (depending on lot width) the allowable massing might be a 30-40-foot-wide building anyway, which is an easy two micros and a hallway wide. But with a larger site, rather than light wells, it might be more profitable to fill everything with rentable floor area via larger units.
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  #34  
Old Posted Oct 21, 2020, 11:31 PM
Qubert Qubert is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by yaletown_fella View Post
I agree almost everything she was quoted as saying regarding NIMBYs putting a chokehold on supply. But there are some important things she didnt address.

The number one priority is we should aiming to provide housing for working people (or people working part time for low wages or between jobs) who are living in unsavoury shared living situations.

Sharing a bathroom and kitchen with 5 other strangers in some rooming house is much closer to sleeping under a bridge, in my experience, than having the mental sanity and dignity of your own small efficiency studio apartment.

People should also not lose their right to a studio apartment if they begin to thrive and save money, they should not be forced to deplete their savings.
Quote:
We need to be realistic and realize that not everyone has the ability to become a software engineer or trades worker. At some point we need to accept that AI is absorbing work, wealth is being transferred upward at an unprecedented rate. A sales tax/program cut funded UBI, negative income tax or direct cash subsidy for rent is the fairest solution.

I wanted to both separate but also link together these two thoughts because they're related in different ways. As the aftereffects of COVID and the 4th Industrial Revolution/AI takes shape I think the need to have to live in "superstar" cities like SF will fade. This will lead to a natural flattening of the housing demand crisis as people naturally move to where they can get the most bang for their buck. I do agree that dignity is a much under-discussed facet of building quality social housing and that we cannot fall into the trap of "warehousing" people.

At some point, however, we need to face the music that you cannot house everyone within the 48sq miles of SF and need to turn to vastly improved infrastructure to enable more parts of the bay area to be easily accessible for all comers. There's no reason that Livermore, Sunnyvale, Concord or Marin County should simply be allowed to be low density while SF, Oakland and cities along the east bay have to soak up all of the housing production as well as having to be the go-to places for the most socially vulnerable. Major cities, even during the last 30 years or so of hyper-gentrification, are still expected to be the dumping grounds for social ills while suburbs skate by on never having to expand their social services.
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  #35  
Old Posted Oct 21, 2020, 11:43 PM
Qubert Qubert is offline
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Originally Posted by Pedestrian View Post
San Francisco doesn't need to get rid of low density zoning where it currently exists. The blockage on fairly dense new housing has not been due to zoning but to anti-development pressure groups able to use the Byzantine planningprocess to block development that is consistent with existing zoning.
Let me be that guy:

There has ever-so-subtly been an unholy alliance that has formed between your traditional NIMBYs and anti-capitalist/anti-developer/anti-wealth advocacy groups/far left orgs who see housing production through a strictly ideological lens. Speaking from a NYC perspective, many housing/community organisations, even if they don't say it openly, in their hearts are ideologically against new private housing development. Class resentment often derails mixed income/inclusionary development. This is something that eventually will need to be called out if there is going to be any way forward on this issue.
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  #36  
Old Posted Oct 22, 2020, 7:02 AM
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Originally Posted by Qubert View Post
many housing/community organisations, even if they don't say it openly, in their hearts are ideologically against new private housing development. Class resentment often derails mixed income/inclusionary development. This is something that eventually will need to be called out if there is going to be any way forward on this issue.
In San Francisco they say it quite openly. Those of us who live in the city have joked at the quite serious assertion that buildings with lots of glass were to be opposed because the glass made them look "too rich".

The best example of what you are talking about is a project known affectionately (not) as "The Monster in the Mission", the Mission being the mostly low rise and Hispanic Mission District.

Quote:
The ‘Monster in the Mission’ is officially dead
By Brock Keeling@BrockKeeling Feb 24, 2020, 2:25pm PST



What started in 2013 as a plan to build a 330-unit building in the Mission District has at long last ended in defeat.

Developer Maximus Real Estate Partners have put the contested property on the market, a decision that activist group Plaza 16 Coalition claims as a victory.

“This is a full validation of our community organizing efforts, and insistence that a strong demand backed by people power can, and will, win.” said Chirag Bhakta, Plaza 16 Coalition spokesperson. “This victory illustrates the resolve of the Mission District community and sends a message to other developers that without community input and buy-in developing a project of this magnitude in our community will no longer be acceptable.”

A rally and celebration of the creature’s demise will be held on March 5 at the 16th Street BART plaza.

Maximus Real Estate spent years attempting get its proposed 10-story, 330-unit, 388,912-square-foot mixed-use building approved to no avail. The construction would have consisted of three related buildings, towering over the 16th Street BART station.

After receiving pushback on the project, the developer tried to score a new deal in which it would have turned its other parcels of land in the Mission (2675 Folsom and 2918 Mission Street) into affordable housing.

No luck.

The major project at 1979 Mission, christened “the Monster in the Mission” by neighborhood activists, sparked ire the moment it went before SF Planning. But this wasn’t your regular pearl-clutching anti-development brouhaha in San Francisco. No, this one will filled with plot twists and accusations of astroturfing. As Mission Local notes, “First came the ‘I’m Not a Monster’ BART advertisements (a teacher claimed she was tricked into being featured in one). And next came the revelations that the developer was paying San Francisco natives to rally and support for the project" . . . .

The sequel to this beastly tale could have a happier end: Plaza 16, a collaboration of roughly 100 local groups, ranging from the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club to the Clarion Alley Mural Project, still wants to build a “100 percent community-developed” affordable housing project on the site by way of “community, government, and philanthropic entities.”
https://sf.curbed.com/2020/2/24/2115...update-dead-sf
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  #37  
Old Posted Nov 1, 2020, 6:55 PM
IMBY IMBY is offline
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I never thought I'd say this but...I kinda wish a republican was running SF. lol
But the Nimby's are too powerful to control, IMO, even with a Republican Mayor!
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