San Francisco Public Press (https://www.sfpublicpress.org/category/housing/page/2/)
One year after emergency repairs were supposed to be completed at Plaza East, 39 units are still waiting on fixes. Meanwhile, in late May, the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development gave the complex a failing score of 40 out of 100 following physical inspection.
Sea level rise is forcing cities around San Francisco Bay to weigh demand for new housing against the need to protect communities from flooding. Builders say they can solve this dilemma with cutting-edge civil engineering. But no one knows whether their ambitious efforts will be enough to keep newly built waterfront real estate safe in coming decades.
Meanwhile, developers are busy building — and telling the public that they can mitigate this one effect of climate change, despite mounting evidence that it could be a bigger problem than previously believed.
Urban renewal was a publicly and privately funded effort across the U.S. wherein local governments acquired land in areas deemed “blighted” — often using a racially biased lens — through eminent domain, forcibly displacing residents and demolishing existing buildings with promises to rebuild. In San Francisco, urban renewal targeted Black cultural centers and neighborhoods, uprooting thousands of families and destroying lively, well-established communities.
Now, San Francisco is giving renewed attention to a program that aims to bring displaced residents and their descendants back to the city as the Board of Supervisors prepares to review a draft Reparations Plan to address historic harms against Black San Franciscans at a meeting March 14.
The Board of Supervisors passed a plan to build 82,000 housing units over the next eight years, maintaining city control over the permitting and building processes. Some critics said the plan does not do enough to prevent low-income residents from displacement as more market-rate apartments are built.
Despite San Francisco officials’ attempts to get ahead of storms, many unhoused people said they were having a hard time accessing shelter beds and other resources to protect them from the rain.
Housing advocates say San Francisco’s eight-year housing plan doesn’t include a comprehensive strategy to build enough affordable housing, to the detriment of the plan’s race and equity goals.
San Francisco residents revealed their top local concerns in a recent Public Press poll. They were given the chance to weigh in on some of those matters during this November’s election.
Designed to combat San Francisco’s long-standing housing shortage, an empty homes tax on the November ballot, Proposition M, would apply to multi-unit residential buildings with prolonged vacancies. Voters will decide the fate of the measure that has garnered support and criticism for its exemptions and low tax amount.
The second of two bills meant to expedite the approval process for affordable housing, Proposition E — aka the Affordable Housing Production Act — was written by District 1 Supervisor Connie Chan and sent to the ballot by a 7-4 by the Board of Supervisors in late July.
Proposition D, dubbed Affordable Housing Now by its creators, is one of two competing proposed amendments to San Francisco’s city charter that would streamline the production of affordable housing projects.
