What should SFBARF say to ABAG on April 1st? Even if you cant come and testify, feel free to leave your ideas.

[Jon Schwark]

This post is concerning the SFBARF meetup / testifying Wednesday April 1st. See the event description and information here: https://www.facebook.com/events/876326502413803/

We are soliciting ideas from any and all housing activists, organizations and local politicians concerned with housing issues. 

Whether it is Affordable or Market rate, ABAG needs to be part of the solution not part of the problem, and they need to start NOW. Once we saw that their current agenda completely ignores the LAO housing smackdown they got this month, we knew the time to speak at their next meeting had come

PLEASE, even if you are not an SFBARF "member" (whatever that means) tell us what you think ABAG needs to do. Do you know of any current proposals ABAG could be part of implementing, but have been resistant to? How can we create an environment to make ABAG, and each individual city more accountable for their failures that have created the current housing crisis? What reforms are needed?

If you represent a housing group or city government agency that interfaces with ABAG, we would welcome any link drops to ABAG content on your site.

We will be assembling all of this for our strategy session at 11:30 on wednesday the 1st, and then divide up the topics into 3-minute chunks and let people grab one that appeals to them and walk right over and speak the truth to the powers that be :)

Please like the event if you think you can come, and invite people to the event on Facebook. Then leave your ideas of what to say here or on the facebook page.

Thanks

Jon

[Jon Schwark]

Description from the event page: 

WHERE DOES THE BUCK STOP? The Association of Bay Area Governments was supposed to act as the regional cooperative mechanism for housing policy and state housing law compliance. Instead it has become a conspiracy panel of "Housing Denier" cities that gives them cover to chronically underbuild. 

ABAG's mismanagement of jobs-housing balance in the Bay Area's SHARED HOUSING MARKET is especially tragic because it caused the CHRONIC HOUSING SHORTAGE currently forcing all of us to pay hundreds or thousands more each month for housing. 

The good news? They have a meeting April 1st and YOU can speak. Officials from every Bay Area city will be there. Meet us at 11:30 for an informative lunch and strategy discussion (location TBD), near Lake Merritt BART in Oakland. Then we will all walk over to testify "relay style" at their 12:30 meeting.

The mismanagement is so deep that one ABAG executive even embezzled $1.3 million in developer fees. 

THE BUCK STOPS HERE. ABAG is the association of BAY AREA governments. They are responsible for making there is enough housing in the BAY AREA. They are the governments. They need to do their job, even if it means some tough choices that their constituents in each city might not like. If that can't happen, each city needs to come into compliance with housing element law by IMMEDIATELY REZONING TO ALLOW SUFFICIENT HOUSING FOR THE FAMILY OF EACH NEW WORKER ADDED WITHIN THAT CITY'S BORDERS.

Don't like TECH BUSSES? Come tell the cities of San Mateo and Santa Clara counties about it.

[Alfred]

I nominate the following:

Allow accessory dwelling units on all parcels, no parking required. 

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[Brian Hanlon]

Most importantly - where are we getting lunch? 

A suggestion:

Shan Dong for noodles --> ABAG --> victory desserts @ Shooting Star Cafe

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[Sonja Trauss]

Shang dong has small tables - Brian do you like new gold metal?

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[Adina Levin]

Are you seeking to discourage pro-housing activists from the Peninsula
from joining?

Everyone has been underbuilding housing, and pointing fingers doesn't
help build a regional movement.

/asl

On Fri, Mar 27, 2015 at 9:24 PM, Alfred <ma...@firstcultural.com> wrote:

> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/SFBArentersfed/CABwcK_2ayypFwiC6hyKvexDb%2BrhjWukYDxCysnd1L4YbQ3DSCg%40mail.gmail.com.

[Jon Schwark]

Sorry If it seemed that way Adina. I guess the particular nature of opposing NIMBYism at a regional level means that rhetoric which will work well in one local area is exactly wrong for another. What was on my mind as i wrote that "don't like tech busses" line was that I had just written another post challenging Plaza 16 people to go as well, and of course they do a lot of hating on Google busses. I don't share that view, so I was kind of throwing it out more as an ironic challenge to them.

I could also have said "don't like to have to ride the tech bus down to work in Mountain View? Or don't like to have to spend an hour on the BART from Bay Point into the city?" and then made a call out to all cities.

Jon

[Mike Ege]

For reference, here's a link to the ABAG page listing all of their constituent jurisdictions.

http://abag.ca.gov/overview/abag_members.html

 My basic feeling at this point is that we should stick to the LAO document; put together a summary of the document's points and have each of us choose a point to ask about during public comment.

 I would love to interject stuff about why they hired Brad Paul, or the whole embezzlement thing, but that would probably detract from our most effective message. Maybe we could interject a pun using the phrase  "eye basket" somewhere in our speeches. :-)

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[Mike Ege]

Also, are we doing press releases?

[Sonja Trauss]

I did once, we can more again

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[Brian Hanlon]

FYI, ABAG complied information about the different housing programs Bay Area municipalities use. I'd love to see (an impossible, I know) policy like, "all height and density requirements are waived so long as the market rental rate in any given municipality exceeds 30% of 80% area median income."

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[Sonja Trauss]

YES. state of emergency measures - you can have your height limits, but only if you're producing enough housing.

List Q.s You have before the meeting. Here are mine:

What is the relationship between the Plan Bay Area and the Regional Housing Needs Allocations?

The RHNA numbers are obviously total failures as predictions. Who is responsible for this failure? What methodology was used to determine them before, what is going to be different next time to ensure more accurate figures?

[Adina Levin]

Thanks - every subregion has their own favorite excuse to not build
housing Silicon Valley anti-development activists say that San
Francisco should do housing since they have the transit (and want to
maintain beloved car-centric place types); and don't want property
values to decrease.

Anti-housing supply activists in San Francisco don't want more housing
to protect views and fears of gentrification, and want the housing to
go up in Oakland, which has its own gentrification fears.

San Jose, meanwhile, is housing-rich and wants more jobs (although
there is a shortage of housing in walkable areas with transit access;
those places are getting bid to the stratosphere; while Santa Clara
county plans to increase expressway miles by 30% to facilitate more
GHG-generating sprawl).

Everyone has a reason why all of those other cities should provide
housing (but not our own community for our special reasons). We need
to stop that.

On Mon, Mar 30, 2015 at 9:39 AM, 'Jon Schwark' via SFBA Renters

> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/SFBArentersfed/11e87ae8-1237-41c1-a346-e01b6d46c38f%40googlegroups.com.

[Adrian Covert]

Hi all,

This is an important meeting. I can't attend, but somebody should definitely say this:
"ABAG's responsibility is not just to assign the RHNA numbers but to hold cities accountable for meeting them.  We cannot do longterm planning as a region if cities persistently refuse to make even a cursory effort to meet their housing obligations.  In 2007/14 we permitted just 49% of the housing needed to meet population growth.  That's a horrible failure and until we address it, ABAG should forget commissioning anymore expensive plans or consultants and instead have its 70 plus staff join us at late night hearings across the Bay Area to fight for more housing."

 

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Adrian Covert Art
San Francisco, CA
415-519-9141
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covert...@gmail.com

[Adina Levin]

Is this within ABAG's charter, or is there a need for additional state law?

"ABAG's responsibility is not just to assign the RHNA numbers but to
hold cities accountable for meeting them."

The Palo Alto Forward list includes someone who's an expert on the
legal aspect - I asked there, but someone on this list might know.

[Adrian Covert]

RHNA has no teeth. All ABAG can do is name and shame...but they don't even do that. It would require state law to change things. Short of that, they should be naming and shaming.

[Starchild]

Supporting individual projects would be better, imho, than trying to put pressure on entire cities or towns to meet ABAG quotas. Those quotas (aka "RHNA numbers") are based on non-transparent political decision-making, not necessarily on where demand is or on what market forces actually want to build. I'd rather not see SFBARF tarred by association with a group of unelected bureaucrats who are seen by many as trying to ram the United Nations' Agenda 21 plan down the throats of local communities over the wishes of people in those communities and their local elected officials.

"Each local authority should enter into a dialogue with its citizens, local organizations, and private enterprises and adopt 'a local Agenda 21.' Through consultation and consensus-building, local authorities would learn from citizens and from local, civic, community, business and industrial organizations and acquire the information needed for formulating the best strategies." 

- Agenda 21, Chapter 28, sec 1, 3

While this may sound harmless enough, in practice the "authorities" tasked with advancing Agenda 21 at the local level are groups like ABAG that are not directly accountable to the citizenry (you don't get to vote for your ABAG representative). Their staff make the real decisions in private, then a series of public meetings and opportunities for public input are orchestrated in order to give the appearance of a democratic process, when really it is about obtaining buy-in or the appearance of buy-in for a pre-determined agenda. At its heart, that agenda presumes that development should happen via centralized government planning and would give people *less* control over how to use their own property, not more.

Love & Liberty,

                                 ((( starchild )))

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[Adrian Covert]

You're right, that seems harmless enough.

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[Sonja Trauss]

Officially RHNA has no teeth I guess, but this notion that SF has built "200% it's needed luxury housing" according to RHNA and is somehow "over supplied" with luxury housing is trotted out constantly and gives great comfort and support to people trying to block new housing. 

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[Mike Ege]

The problem is that when you don't build enough, what does get built reprices itself into the luxury category- just as fixer-uppers suddenly appreciate under gentrification.

With regards to gentrification, it needs to be understood and reinforced that the first people who complain about gentrification are in fact gentrifiers themselves. 

People who move into cheaper neighborhoods because they see them as "on the edge", or want to give themselves a financial leeway for creative endeavors, are in fact in the process of gentrifying that neighborhood. That's how gentrification begins. "Cool people" move into a neighborhood and make it cool, and then everyone with the means to do so wants to move-in. 

People who support housing moratoria often do so because they want to keep their "cool neighborhoods" cool. But If you don't build enough to accommodate people who have the means to move in anyway, then everyone else gets forced out.

Backlash against popularity in an effort to maintain "cool" in fact becomes a mechanism of gentrification.

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[Mike Ege]

 Okay, in anticipation of our strategy meeting before the hearing, here is a list of the bullet points from the legislative analyst report which I think are most relevant to what we want to say:

California’s Home Prices and Rents Higher Than Just About Anywhere Else.

Many Households Have Difficulty Affording Housing in California.

Housing Costs Are a Major Consideration for Most Households.

Despite Relatively Higher Incomes, Californians Devote Larger Share to Housing.

California Households Four Times More Likely to Live in Crowded Housing.

California’s Coastal Metros Have Long Commutes.

Building Less Housing Than People Demand Drives High Housing Costs.

California Is Building Too Little Housing in Coastal Areas.

Spillover of Demand to Live on the Coast Affects Housing Costs in Inland California.

Little Increase in Housing Densities in Coastal Metros.

Many Coastal Communities Have Growth Controls.

Local Ballot Measures on Coast Have Limited Development.

High Housing Costs Problematic for Households and the State’s Economy.

High Housing Costs Mean Fewer Californians Work in State’s Most Productive Cities

Fewer Workers in State’s Most Productive Cities Hinders Economic Growth.

High Housing Costs Contribute to Poverty in California.

Recognize Targeted Role of Affordable Housing Programs. 

We note, however, that the scale of these programs—even if greatly increased—could not meet the magnitude of new housing required that we identify in this report...consider how targeted programs could supplement more private housing construction by assisting those with limited access to market rate housing, such as people experiencing homelessness, those with mental and/or physical health challenges, and those with very low incomes. (in other words: working people should not have to resort to applying for capital – a Affordable Housing.)

More Private Housing Construction in Coastal Urban Areas.

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