SF Planning Department goes into Infomercial Mode: Would you buy a used plan from these people? The SF Planning Department has gone into high gear to promote their nonsensical lack of planning for the real housing needs of San Franciscans. Now let’s break down the silliness. Planning’s infomercial begins with a statement about the incredible DEMAND for housing in San Francisco. True on its face. But we have to understand that the demand for housing in San Francisco plays out in “the market” as a regional demand for luxury housing created by the extreme income inequality of the Bay Area (the fastest growing in the nation - sfgate/bayarea/article/In-growth-of-wealth-gap-we-re-No-1-5281174.php ), as well as a demand by international cash investors to park their money in a relatively “safe” real estate market of pied-a-terres and second homes (48hillsonline.org/2014/09/29/investigation-new-condos-arent-owned-san-francisco-residents/ ). What’s more interesting than the statement about demand is the statement about JOB GROWTH – that San Francisco now has more jobs than it has ever had, at 600,000. But as most economists understand, there is a significant multiplier effect: for each high wage job created, four to five additional low- and mid-wage jobs are created – all the domestic workers, retail workers, baristas and restaurant workers, construction laborers, clerks, and school teachers, that are just as much a part of our city as the high-tech economy. The important thing about the link between housing and jobs is not overall growth, but at what income levels? The big lie, often repeated by the city’s growth boosters, is how housing supply has not kept up with demand. It’s all about where you cut the numbers. The city lost population steadily from the time of World War 2 up to the 1980s, even while we continued to develop new housing (the biggest housing construction boom in the last 60 years was under Urban Renewal in the early 60s). The video is correct in saying that in the last census count, the city’s population was the highest it’s ever been – because that’s the first year we finally got back to our World War 2 boom levels. But since the city actually kept building new housing, even as population was shrinking and then slowly rebounding, why are we in such as housing crisis? Because that housing has been slowly “redistributed” upward to the rich, based on the regional and global demand at the highest income levels. But couldn’t we have built more since the 80s, when the city’s population began to grow again? The video again mentions an important fact, then glosses over it. Much of the housing currently being constructed was actually approved BEFORE the market crash in 2008, but then the investors fled. Despite the fact that the Planning Department approved all this new housing in the mid-2000s, the truth is that capital markets simply will not build (not in the San Francisco distorted market, anyway) EXCEPT when they can command top dollar. So, no, approving more market-rate housing won’t get us any more housing than what “the market” wants. The infomercial gets at its most nonsensical when it mentions the Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA), the city’s Housing Element, and the neighborhood Area Plans. Back to jobs. The RHNA and Housing Element goals are based on projections of what income levels people will have based on jobs growth projections, and how much they will be able to afford in housing. In simple terms, the RHNA and Housing Element goals are that we should be building 40% low-income housing (restaurant and service sector jobs, as well as seniors on limited incomes), 20% moderate income housing (clerks and teachers), and 40% above that (including nurses and firefighters, not just that percent that are those Twitter investor jobs in SF that pay enough to afford the hyper luxury product). The State requires that each city create a “Housing Element” within their General Plan, outlining how they will house future population in at various job categories and income levels. These goals are also in line with the State’s sustainable communities and carbon emissions goals, so that people don’t have to be commuting long distances to get to their jobs. Communities from Octavia Blvd to the East side of the City supported the “upzoned” area plans passed in 2007-2008 on the assumption that those housing affordability goals would actually be part of implementing the plans. Sadly, the city planners have lots of good ideas, but no accountability to actually meeting those State-mandated goals. When the infomercial says that the “vast majority” of housing is built by the private sector, and a small amount of “below market-rate” units by the nonprofit, they are absolutely correct. And then the infomercial goes on to talk about the 12% “inclusionary units” for moderate income people that some market-rate developers sometimes build. Without reference to the actual need by income levels, they don’t tell us that in fact, to meet our real need, at least 40% of all the housing built should be those deeply affordable low-income units “built by the nonprofit sector,” and that 20% of the total housing should be those inclusionary units for moderate-income earners “built by the private sector.” The infomercial closes out with the city’s silly housing barometer, like it was a small town blood drive or something. Gee, we didn’t make our goals – and all those people are homeless or driven to live in Antioch because that’s the only place they can afford. In typical planner-speak, the infomercial gives the last word to “market-incentives.” If the city was serious about addressing the problem, they would be looking at actual need, and they would put actual numbers next to those needs: how much funding, and how many public and private sites do we need to set aside, in order to build low-income housing developments that are needed to sustainably house our service industry, and how do we get to the actual need for 30% of market-rate units that we would have to accomplish if we were to provide the necessary housing for all our teachers, clerks, and others in the middle. And, finally, how do we work as a region to ensure that all the cities are working toward similar goals, so we are not left as a bedroom community for Mountain View, and all our other workers displaced to the outer suburban fringes.
Posted on: Thu, 13 Nov 2014 15:23:20 +0000