Why I don't think we should endorse the Mission Rock ballot measure

[Jon Schwark]

Honestly, I don't think as a group we should be endorsing Mission Rock but I don't think we have to oppose it either. 

First, let me get out of the way that on the pro side, I like the development. it has good neighborhood amenities, and I know the people in that part of D6 have fought hard to get them. I also know the forces of NIMBYism and Eastern Neighborhoods have put lots of obstacles in the way of doing ANYTHING here, and have to a large degree already succeeded...

I dislike the idea that it even has to get ballot box approval for its zoning, so I may just vote for it on those grounds. 

BUT

On the other hand, if we do the math, it adds 4x more jobs than housing. Will this make rents go down? No. Is it pouring more fuel on the flame? YES

If this were a station area plan in any of the office park suburbs on the Peninsula, we would be complaining about that ratio. 

Even on the affordable housing front, it is a clear loss.  Even though Jane Kim has been proudly displaying her 40% Affordable Merit Badge every time she speaks, the truth is, Mission Rock probably only satiates around 8% of the affordable housing demand the development itself creates at current market conditions. 

(I'll explain those numbers later in a sub post here for those interested.)

This is a GIANT TRACT that was designated as mixed use. It is reasonable to expect the uses to balance out to some degree.

Just because it is a cool development and a handful of tall buildings might survive the decades long effort to block them doesn't mean we have to endorse it. 

Are we a developer group or a renter group? On the issue of housing Mission Rock is NOT a win, and I think we should reserve our clear "YES" endorsements for things that are... 

...or for projects where negotiations involved us and offered us concessions.

I suggest that our 2015 endorsement card is EXACTLY the right place for: 

 

1) making our case that Jobs:housing ratio is more important than affordable% and 

2) Putting everyone in the city on notice – If you want our help, you need to include us in negotiations early and often, and at an equal level with the community groups and non-profits. As we continue our exponential growth into our full audience and clout over the next few years, I think this stance will serve us well. 

My suggestion is that in addition to YES or NO, we have a "decline to endorse" option (with a clear explanation), and use that liberally.

It keeps us honest to our core mission and who we claim to represent. 

Jon

[Adina Levin]

+1 with a tiny tweak.

"making our case that Jobs:housing ratio is more important than affordable %"

I say this often but phrase it differently.   If you are building too little housing overall, there is no way affordable can catch up.   

If you have 10,000 new jobs and 1,000 new housing units, and you're doing great with 500 affordable - 50% affordable! - you still have many well-off new workers chasing the existing housing stock and displacing people.

BMR housing is important but based on basic math there's no way it can make up if you're not building enough. 

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[Kyle Huey]

On Wed, Aug 19, 2015 at 2:22 PM, 'Jon Schwark' via SFBA Renters
Federation <SFBAren...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
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I want to agree with this, but one thing has me wary. The
"progressives" often say something similar, except that their solution
isn't to add housing in proportion to jobs, but rather to not add
jobs. We need to somehow clearly distinguish ourselves here.

- Kyle

[Jon Schwark]

Totally agree! 

> email to SFBArentersfed+unsub...@googlegroups.com.

[Kate Vershov Downing]

Perhaps just focus the message less on the jobs-housing imbalance and more on "we need lots of housing and we'd like to see lots of housing built on this tract." It's a very thin line, but the imbalance does make people say "let's just kill the jobs" whereas the latter isn't about  jobs at all.

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[Adina Levin]

I do think it's a useful metric because ignoring it has helped the undersupply get worse and worse over time.

The eyes-closed attitude toward the j/h imbalance was accompanied by a political compromise acknowledging that it is impossible and unwelcome to build enough housing overall, but if "we" support the funding of small amounts of "affordable" housing, we assuage our liberal consciences while still protecting our views and parking spaces.

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[Armand Domalewski]

It's too bad we didn't have the foresight to put a competing ballot measure on the ballot with much larger amounts of housing on the table

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[Starchild]

Let's not forget also that a building is ultimately a building. Whether people are using it for working, sleeping, praying, eating, selling, or whatever is secondary to the fact that the space itself exists and can provide shelter to human beings and their stuff.

Just because a site is originally developed with commercial activities in mind does not mean it can, should, or will be used only for those purposes. Factories, churches, office buildings, retail storefronts, and other spaces have all been repurposed as housing in the past, and there's no reason to believe this kind of repurposing won't continue to happen in the future. Nor is there any reason besides political restrictions why this can't happen more now.

The only roadblock is the artificial segregation imposed by zoning.

Having zoning is like going through a cafeteria buffet line with a tray that is divided into rigid sections of different sizes, and being allowed to use Section 1 only for vegetables, Section 2 only for potatoes, Section 3 only for fish, Section 4 only for sauces, and so on, regardless of what combinations and amounts of foods your stomach is actually clamoring for.

If government zoned the way we eat the way that it currently zones how we use our land, this is what all your meals might look like (unless your plate was rezoned or you applied for and were granted an "eating variance"):

[Rafael Solari]

Jon, correct me if I'm wrong, but seems like you're suggesting that one solution to the housing shortage is to create an office-space shortage. If that's the premise, I disagree pretty strongly. An office-space shortage would hurt the employers with the least ability to pay, like nonprofits and new companies .

Also, I should note that we are in an office space shortage:

(via http://www.loopnet.com/San-Francisco_California_Market-Trends)

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[Mike Ege]

Linking jobs and housing by development in many ways is what got us into this problem in the first place. There should be a link between jobs and housing absolutely, but it needs to be done at the overall plan level.

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[Sonja Trauss]

Jon! Thank you for starting the Ballot measure threads.

Here is where you can vote on the Renters' Fed PAC endorsements: http://goo.gl/forms/m0Q7htjSdd

You can edit your responses! So vote early, vote often! Voting will close Tuesday September 8th.

Notice - I will cross reference the votes here with the people who signed into the database of voters, or donated. If you want your vote to count, you have to either put yourself in the database of voters, or have donated to the Tilt, or send me $35 now on paypal (just sign the database, it's free).

On Wed, Aug 19, 2015 at 3:22 PM, Armand Domalewski <armanddo...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[Sonja Trauss]

Oh yeah, here is the db of voters link: http://www.sfbarf.org/pages/vote.html

[Rafael Solari]

I think that a lot of these ballot measures aren't relevant to housing, so I'd like to vote "no endorsement" on them.

How can I vote for "no endorsement"? Seems like picking a number like 2 or 3 is still a weak endorsement.

 

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[Sonja Trauss]

just don't answer at all. It's not required you answer each question.

Vote on Renters' PAC endorsements: http://goo.gl/forms/m0Q7htjSdd Voting closes Sept 8 2015.

[Jon Schwark]

I'm definitely not suggesting that job growth is bad, and I don't think SFBARF should be against adding office space. I think we should stand for balancing the two. 

Let's think about what this means for a second. If we assume a living space is 600sf and a working space is 200sf , then every time we allow one 30 story office building, we need to be allowing 3 condo towers. 

Or a fresh development of an A x B block area of Z density. Or a 25% infill capacity increase in 2A x 2B block area of Z density.  

I'm suggesting we need to think of it like laws of physics and stick to it. 

If I takes requiring a cap and trade agreement between developments or area plans (or cities, which is basically what abag is supposed to be) I could see that working. I want every business to say to the cities where they want to locate "we want to build 4 buildings, one office and 3 housing" and the cities to say "oh what the hell, get it over with" because that is the path of least resistance. 

Personally, from a planning standpoint, I question whether it makes sense to put such a heavy concentration of jobs in downtown SF as opposed to spreading it out along transit lines. We could get a lot more out of lines that weren't so lopsided, but that is a totally different discussion. I don't think northeast San Francisco is anywhere close to full. 

Jon

Sent from my iPhone

On Aug 19, 2015, at 5:27 PM, Rafael Solari <rafs...@gmail.com> wrote:

Jon, correct me if I'm wrong, but seems like you're suggesting that one solution to the housing shortage is to create an office-space shortage. If that's the premise, I disagree pretty strongly. An office-space shortage would hurt the employers with the least ability to pay, like nonprofits and new companies .

Also, I should note that we are in an office space shortage:

<Screen Shot 2015-08-19 at 5.20.07 PM.png>

(via http://www.loopnet.com/San-Francisco_California_Market-Trends)

[Jon Schwark]

Ok I'll bite. How did linking jobs and housing get us into this?

Jon

Sent from my iPhone

On Aug 19, 2015, at 5:40 PM, Mike Ege <mi...@frisko.org> wrote:

Linking jobs and housing by development in many ways is what got us into this problem in the first place. There should be a link between jobs and housing absolutely, but it needs to be done at the overall plan level.

On Wed, Aug 19, 2015 at 5:27 PM, Rafael Solari <rafs...@gmail.com> wrote:

Jon, correct me if I'm wrong, but seems like you're suggesting that one solution to the housing shortage is to create an office-space shortage. If that's the premise, I disagree pretty strongly. An office-space shortage would hurt the employers with the least ability to pay, like nonprofits and new companies .

Also, I should note that we are in an office space shortage:

<Screen Shot 2015-08-19 at 5.20.07 PM.png>

(via http://www.loopnet.com/San-Francisco_California_Market-Trends)

[Mike Ege]

The whole story of Prop M.

[Kyle Huey]

To elaborate slightly, historically harping on about linking jobs and
residential has been a progressive anti-growth tactic. If we're going
to do this it needs to be very clear how we're different.

- Kyle

[Mike Ege]

Part of the irony of this is that the progs hail Prop M as some sort
of victory, when in reality it accomplished nothing. Office
development slowed due to the Bush recession, and Prop M beauty
contests were inconceivable until the early 2000's. By then, Class A
office development had become a tail to tech workspace growth, which
doesn't require Class A space. And yes, the entire mindset behind Prop
M was that office brought demand for housing which couldn't be built.

If we were to venture into such a proposal, I suspect we would end up
with a metering scheme similar to Jane Kim's "Housing Balance"
measure, but metering commercial v. housing instead of market rate
housing v. subsidized. Hopefully with longer calendar intervals. And
it could still be corrupted.

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[Armand Domalewski]

Armand meets an Alien
Alien: so humans need places to live, yes?
Armand: yup
Allen: and they must work to accumulate resources yes?
Armand: yup
Alien: and humans vigorously fight building homes and creating jobs?
Armand: ....yup

Sent from my iPhone

[Mike Ege]

> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/SFBArentersfed/E4592837-0F0C-45F7-BB60-56E5C12AB5BE%40gmail.com.

[Donald Dewsnup]

The reason why this is even going to the ballot is because of Prop K due to the increasing of the height limits of the buildings on the waterfront. Supe Kim was ok with this due to the agreement for 40% affordable housing that she negotiated with Art and the Giants. Even Art Agnos gave his blessing on this project.

Therefore, I motion we endorse this on the leap of faith that with increased heights of buildings we get more affordable housing in return.

[s...@stephenwoods.net]

I'd think as a matter of policy we should be in favor of any ballot measure that results in an increase in housing units, unless there is a competing measure that results in more.

[Jon Schwark]

Really? Any construction that added one unit? So if we changed the zoning of the entire bay area to be one floor of housing on 10 floors of office for all new construction, that would be ok?