By Calvin Welch, HANC Board
Last month the Board of the Haight-Ashbury Neighborhood Council voted to oppose unless amended Supervisor Melgar’s rather misleadingly labeled "Family Housing Opportunity Special Use District" that included both the Haight-Ashbury and Inner Sunset in its boundary. Sold by the Supervisor as making it easier "for homeowners to add up to four units on their lots," she said repeatedly that the legislation was for "Westside homeowners".
The legislation’s chief objective was to allow demolitions of existing units with neither public notice nor public hearing. In its initial form the legislation would have required that the property be owned only a year prior to applying for the no notice demolition, creating an unmistakable opportunity for speculators. Moreover, there were no affordability requirements for the density and demolition concessions, making it even more attractive for "buy, demo and displace” real estate "investors," nor was there a prohibition on short term rental use for the new units.
Had the legislation only applied to western neighborhood single family home lots such an open invitation to rampant speculation would have been limited in scope. The legislation however includes all of the Inner Sunset and Haight Ashbury, neighborhoods in which tenants outnumber homeowners three and four to one. Allowing such speculation in these neighborhoods would produce far more serious displacement of tenants for no additional affordability.
The HANC Board called upon the legislation to be held in committee until amended to require at least five years of prior ownership, ban short term rental uses in the new units, and require permanent affordability in at least some of the new units. Supervisor Melgar refused the last two amendments while her fellow Land Use Committee members, Supervisors Preston and Peskin, agreed with HANC in seeking longer ownership requirements but limited that to only multi unit buildings. After being held in committee for one week while the amendment was made, the full Board unanimously passed Melgar’s legislation.
This legislation is simply one of several being proposed by the Mayor and her allies on the Board to implement new state policy calling for density bonuses, "as a right" and market rate housing project approval without meaningful, or, in some cases, any, public hearing or notice, with little if any affordable units being required. This is all being done in the name of "solving the housing crisis" with implications that these new units will somehow address the need to house homeless San Franciscans.
As with Melgar’s “Family Housing" legislation the hype around the Mayor’s proposals far exceeds the reality. Adding new market rate housing which less than 10% of current San Franciscans can afford (and not one currently un-housed San Franciscans can afford) does not "solve" our City's housing crisis, but makes it worse. Allowing for easier demolitions of existing housing displaces current residents and does not house them; reducing or eliminating affordable requirements on new market rate development will not increase housing opportunities for our neighbors but, in fact, reduce them.
As the vote by the Board on Melgar’s "bait and switch" legislation shows, even "progressive" Supervisors are reluctant to stand firm against the onslaught from the tech/real estate coalition and their "YIMBY" front men. We are going to be in for one heck of a ride when the only thing standing between demolition and displacement of thousands of our neighbors, the Federal Reserve's continued insistence on high interest rates, which has simply frozen the market rate housing development industry, finally ends and the big roulette game starts up again. Our work continues.