The largest affordable housing development to be built in the Mission, 510 units that will sit on top of the Potrero bus yard, will be constructed without any parking, raising concerns from current residents of the northeast Mission who already struggle to find parking.
The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s current plan of action to address those concerns?
“Anyone moving into the area will know that they can’t park anywhere for free,” said Mari Hunter, the transportation planner in charge of the revised parking plan, at a Tuesday meeting between SFMTA and community members to discuss the development and its effects on nearby parking.
“Maybe they’ll see if they can live without a car,” Hunter added, though she conceded that “some number are probably going to bring a car.”
Participants of Tuesday’s meeting conjectured about whether the income limits on the 510 units, half of which will be low-income and half of which will be workforce units for such professions as bus drivers and teachers, will make future residents more or less likely to own cars.
The Protrero Yard Project will include 510 units atop the bus yard. Of those, 292 units will be affordable housing: 101 for seniors between 30 and 70 percent of the area median income, and 191 for families within 35 to 100 percent of the AMI. The remaining 218 units will be workforce housing, with qualifying incomes between 80 and 120 percent of the AMI.
Peter Belden, a Livable Streets Committee Co-Chair and SF Bike Coalition member, felt “sure” that “an overwhelming majority of those folks won’t have cars.”
Roberto Hernandez, who is on the executive committee of the Latino Task Force, argued the opposite, and urged the developers to survey residents of nearby affordable housing complexes about whether they own vehicles. Within a one-mile radius of the project are four other recently constructed affordable housing complexes with a total of 510 units, none of which include parking.
An SFMTA survey on car ownership from 2019 found that 53 percent of households making less than $100,000 in annual income did not own cars, and that 75 percent of households making over $100,000 did.
But the survey also found that 81 percent of households with children have at least one vehicle. And even two-person households making $100,000 would qualify for units in the new development, given the income limits of the project.
Should the agency be mistaken about the extent to which the lack of free street parking will disincentivize car ownership, it seems that hundreds of new cars will be competing for spots in the neighborhood.
At least one participant in last month’s meeting about the development proposed that residents of the affordable-housing complex be barred from applying for neighborhood parking permits.
On Tuesday, however, Hunter clarified that the SFMTA is not able to prevent residents from obtaining permits.
“If they do show up with a car, they will be eligible,” she said.
The SFMTA redesign of parking in the northeast Mission further muddies the outlook on parking. The agency has proposed eliminating free parking between 13th/Division Street to Valencia Street, and 21st Street to Potrero Avenue.
The aim of the plan is to make parking easier, as replacing free parking with metered parking will increase vehicle turnover. But Hunter’s comments on Tuesday revealed a hope that by requiring residents to purchase permits to park in the neighborhood, the revised plan will push some residents to go carless.
According to the Progressive way, low income families will be willing to give up on their most precious possession, a car… , that they need to go shopping to Costco, or drive to go to work outside the city… Indeed, low income families always shop at Whole Food and all work downtown in offices or just WFH. Wonder when these Progressives plan to go back to Earth.
This project will be great for people
1. Who use UBER to commute
2. Who work from home or within 1 bus ride of their job.
3. People who make $100,000 per year who need “affordable” housing.
How about parking for the muni operators?
Definitely many folks require a car to to work and this issue can be income dependent. But the way this issue is income dependent seems to me to be related to the fact that housing near public transit or central in the city can be very expensive, and you have to travel to outlying, less connected neighborhoods to be able to afford decent accomodation. This project seems great because it provides many affordable units in a conventient location. As a current resident of north east mission, I find that while I own a car, I barely drive it. Maybe this location will not be right for people depending on their commute, but I think it enables a short commute to many parts of the city without a car, and even down the peninsula since it is not far from the caltrain stops. James did make a great point, that transit must be improved before making driving more difficult. This is of course true as well, but I do not think it is a huge barrier for this development
We ought to recognize the difference between people who have the privilege to choose not to have a car from people who are just too damn broke to have a car and who aspire to the freedoms of car-ownership.
I love that “Transit First” has been reduced to a sound bite. Reading the policy in full reveals that it goes on to say that to accomplish this, alternative means of transportation (Public) must be developed to entice people out of their cars, not to devise means to force people out of their cars. All of the language I have heard around “Transit First’ if of the latter persuasion which is a corruption of the original policy.
The BoS voted in 2018 to do away with minimum parking requirements for new development. Developers are incentivized to leave out parking spaces by your representatives, as part of their “Transit first” policy. If you don’t care for the policy, you can always write your local City supervisor.
There are two major problems with this plan. Money and safety. Why is SFMTA building housing when they claim they are broke and have to cut MUNI service? More merchants will leave and that will further cut tax revenues. How many of you feel safe walking on the streets, taking the bus, or BART now?
Businesses all over SF have closed as parking and traffic lanes are removed. Sales tax revenues are going down as SFMTA continues to pour their limited resources into harassing cars and MUNI riders while cutting MUNI service. Even the Chronicle is questioning SF’s failed gentrification policies. Safeway is closing stores. No parking for trucks and delivery problems will escalate the cost of goods, including food.
Don’t miss the story about the plans to take down the Central Freeway that will put all that cross town traffic on our streets.
We just heard that SFMTA employees who question Mari Hunter’s illogical statements are fired. You can place the blame where you like, but, the demise of the Mission is guaranteed if SFMTA is allowed to continue along this path of destruction.
This project is a joint venture. Muni isn’t building the housing. Affordable housing developers are. It’s a Muni “yard” with housing on top.
I live in the area, have a child and gave up my car 10 years ago. It was a burden lifted: money, break-ins, parking tickets.
Pretty hilarious people are mad that one single apartment building built on top of a literal bus depot has no resident parking. Mask off they’re probably just mad because they might have to clean all the garbage out of their garage.
Off the top, if I were to qualify for these low income units I’d still need my car to supplement my income, Uber, Lift, and food delivery, where would I park?
By the time this project is done. Uber may be in self driving mode. Uber is planning to replace human drivers with automated drivers. Food deliveries can be done on bikes, eBikes, scooters and/or motorcycles.
My request to all commenters is to include how many children (w/ ages) live in your household. There are families that live in this and nearby neighborhoods that you don’t speak for.
Why are you asking people to share personal information that even you do not want to share?
The government of the most expensive city in the country would be utterly foolish to prioritize parking over affordable housing.
The city desperately needs as much affordable housing as possible. That’s more important than parking spots. Busybody neighbors should be summarily ignored.
Why do people think it’s acceptable to park their private car for free on public roads? If I don’t have a car, can I park my storage container there? It’s time we stopped subsidizing cars. The pollution, injuries, fatalities, degradation of urban space, cost to residents and businesses is ridiculous.
Who said it should be free? In a matter of fact, free parking should no longer exist in SF. Therefore, new constructions must come with a reserved parking spot
hear hear!
We seem to have no problem with subsidizing people’s needs, why not parking. Those people with cars may need them for their own use.
People are always against change, but if we are to build more housing in a dense urban city, we need to change our car dependent lifestyle. And this location, literally right on top of the central bus station, is perfect. Added to that, the mission is a great place to bicycle. Still, we need more investment in improving public transit but we won’t do so if we are stuck in a car dependent lifestyle.
May be you should learn that some people NEED a car. Not everybody can afford to work from home or work downtown. By definition, most low income families have 2 jobs and work at odd hours. They can’t afford to take MUNI all the time, especially when they are Uber drivers or deliver food. The world is not just about you
“Central bus station”? Do you live in San Francisco?
Good! USA has between 700 million & 2 billion parking spaces. We have enough. There will never be enough for the car cartel though, good think is we can just ignore them.
The amount of misguided hand-wringing in the comments section is just tragic. SF was supposed to be a progressive place, but I guess we lost that a long time ago.
“Give away cars to poor people?” “It’s privileged to care about the environment?” Wow.
No big city in Western Europe — which is actually progressive, not the performative/virtue-signaling BS we seem to have here — has absurd discussions like this. Cars are necessary, of course. And yet, car ownership in a big city should be discouraged and other, better forms of transportation should be made available to people at all income levels. Part of this means building some buildings without parking and making street parking less plentiful.
We have a global environments crisis, folks. You all should be ashamed of yourselves for trying to co-opt progressive values to push for more cars on the road.
case in point:
years ago they built a few condo buildings at pennsylvania and 16th and explicitly with no parking garages. the area is still today lighty industrial. there is for example SF paint source, the Hilti dealership, back then Center Hardware, and plenty more.
as soon as the buildings were finished and residents moved in ever since the streets are packed with parked cars way more than before especiallyon that corner.
packed with parked cars owned by those residents living in those apt buildings with no garages. that’s not an assumption or hearsay but a fact. if you don’t believe it, talk to the guys at SF paint source.
The parking impact is directly related to the immensity of the project. It’s just too big for any of our urban infrastructure to absorb — not to mention it’s unsightly and architecturally oppressive for both residents and neighbors.
Yes, density in urban areas well-served by mass transit is a horrible idea.
I don’t trust the results of any SFMTA survey. These surveys are neither scientific nor reliable. They’re done online with self-selected samples. The bogus claim is that if a sample is large enough, it’s magically representative.
The people making these plans sound elitist and delusional about people in low income housing not having cars just go look at Valencia Street gardens
This is literally tragic and will greatly affect the neighbors. This whole city thinks everyone just works on a laptop or can bike to work. The reality is that many working class people need cars and trucks for there work. I have so many friends and neighbors that have a work truck filled with paint, or ladders or wood that they use daily. There isn’t a solution to that. You cannot Uber a truck or use MUNI (although I’ve tried). Vehicle ownership is doing to be necessary for a large chunk of the middle and working class no matter what you believe.
Even A Dogwalker with a van is even hurt by this nonsense.
Provide a reasonable amount of parking for the new tenants and neighbors. The topography of the plot makes it incredibly easy to do and wouldn’t be unsightly.
A city where everyone drives a car will be gridlock, and a city where only some drive a car will be unequal. This is a good step towards a city where we have better transit service & only the few who absolutely must drive do. And yes, my family of 4 lives without a car in SF.
I encourage Mission Local to cover the Muni service cuts that remain versus 2019 and how those affect people. For example, the 12-Folsom in the Mission has gone from every 15 min to every 20 min, a 25% service reduction that is much more dramatic than any new competition for parking from a single development.
Any parking that would be provided at Potrero Yard would directly take away public funds that can instead go into hiring Muni workers, paying them better, or building additional affordable housing. It would also take physical space out of the building and remove affordable homes, unless you wanted to add height and add shadows on Franklin Square Park, which the draft plan has been careful to avoid.
The reality is that the more parking you build, the more people are going to buy cars. Not only has this been studied (in San Francisco! https://www.sightline.org/2021/01/28/more-parking-isnt-harmless-it-actually-makes-us-drive-more/), it’s also plain common sense. Have you seen 17th Street at rush hour? How are hundreds more cars going to fit on our streets if they build parking for them? It doesn’t make sense. Everyone driving cars all the time isn’t a transportation system that works in a 7×7 city.
I understand that people feel public transit or biking, even with new family e-bikes that can carry 2-3 kids, aren’t credible options for families, but I implore my neighbors to push for the improvements that would MAKE these into credible options instead of just giving up and frittering away more public money on cars, the biggest contributor to CO2 emissions in California.
nonsense!!
people have and need cars for various reasons. you are just assuming everybody has the same commute every day on the same route and spends his/her entire life in the city and if they had a car they would drive every day and all day.
wrong!
– sf residents need to leave the city (by car!) for other places in the bay area, e.g. visiting family, taking care of relatives, etc.
– lots of sf residents are contractors of various kinds (not only construction related like home care, etc.) and have to travel quick within the city limits, partially with their work gear.
– sf residents have recreational needs outside the city on a very regular base, like hiking , cycling, etc for example at mt diablo, mt tam, pt reyes, and plenty more of state parks.
– many sf residents are surfers. yes, there are a few who travel by bicycle with their surfboard to ocean beach, but not to pacifica or rodeo beach
– lots of sf residents work outside of SF like in marin county where commuting by public transport is just not feasible.
i have a car (no garage) and drive 6,000 miles/year for the above mentioned reasons. of those miles maybe 2,000 miles are within SF, 1 day per week on average.
my GF works in San Rafael. using public transport would take 2.5 hrs/day. by car it’s half that time.
many of the items you listed seem to be recreational in nature- I’m not sure I agree that this development should have parking for those reasons. Same goes with working in Marin county. This is not a very good place to live for commuting to Marin County. I wouldn’t be surprised if it takes 1.5 hours to drive from this location to san rafael from this spot. If someone works in Marin County, or recreates often outside of the city, this might not be a good location for them to live. Same with contractors who must own and transport their own tools, who are not the entirety of people who need affordable housing
You must not realize that fact that the people who move in probably already have cars because they need them and it’s not a luxury
A car in SF is a luxury. It is not essential nor necessary. Owning a car offers a premium experience at a premium price that others should not have to subsidize. Rich snobs complaining about a lack of parking have no clue how much their unnecessary luxury harms everyone else around them! Car centric designs hurts cities because everyone’s hates living in lifeless places were driving the only viable option to effectively get anywhere. Complaints about inadequate free parking in SF deserve to be ignored. In fact, the more vocal the outrage of cars-first advocates, the more effective job the city is doing to make life more livable for the rest of us! Please keep outraging those cars-first advocates, because appeasing cars-first advocates means more hellscapes for the rest of us!
All removing parking does is make the city even more hostile to families, especially multigenerational housing. Owning a car makes it possible for parents to take time off work to take kids to the doctor and then return to work. To pick up a week’s worth of groceries. To take grandparents to the doctor. To take kids and grandparents on picnics. It makes it possible for parents to stay in one home even through job changes. to locations across town or out of town.
That low income people do not own cars is not a virtue. From slate: https://slate.com/business/2019/05/maps-car-ownership-income-population-density-green-new-deal.html if the Green New Deal is a pure social justice project, it should probably just give poor people cars, because access to efficient transportation is the most effective predictor of escaping poverty
This is an example of YIMBY construction making the city more difficult for low income families.
Then how do multi-generational families exist in New York City?
How? NYC has much better public transit and amenities and other services are often in easy walking distance. No comparison to SF.
How? They have much better public transit, with amenities and services often in easy walking distance. No comparison.
You do not understand the economics of owning a car.
Any parent who stretches a dollar for their kids, but keeps paying for an automobile is taking thousands of dollars a year and flushing them down the toilet.
” it should probably just give poor people cars, because access to efficient transportation is the most effective predictor of escaping poverty”
And we saw what you did there. “efficient transportation” is not the same as owning a car.
You hit it out of the ballpark
It’s mostly people of privilege who think lower income folks can do without
Nah. It’s just fine. And safer too, since car crashes have been the leading cause of death for children for 20+ years. And since any kid born in the city now is highly likely to see 2100, aka “the time frame when free parking and cheap gas will have melted the ice caps”.
~ signed, a city parent with no car and an ebike that was wildly expensive by ebike standards but also less than 1/5th the average cost of the average new American car, not even counting insurance, gas, parking, etc.
Sounds privileged
This is nothing you can’t do on MUNI. Housing costs go down when you unbundle parking (whose cost is in the tens of thousands per space) from housing / remove parking entirely so not sure what you’re trying to pin on YIMBYs here. Otherwise car-free people are subsidizing parking infrastructure they get no benefit from – obviously regressive. Besides that owning a car is a huge cost to shackle someone with – much better to make transit more frequent, a case that would be self evident with more neighbors.
Seattle is doing the same thing. Not providing parking does not make the rent go down. It may make it cheaper to build but the builder will not be the one renting these units out. If they want to build without parking then you should not be able to rent the apartment if you have a car in your name. This parking crap is only adding to the frustration of living in the city.
Exactly. The YIMBYs always assume everyone should either take Ubers or get the hell out of town, making room for more affluent YIMBYs. Consigning low income workers to Muni just means it takes hours (and often enough a considerable amount of walking) to get around town for simple chores. And telling folks to ride bikes doesn’t work for those of us too old and/or disabled to easily pedal around town.
Yeah, parking is easy to find in the surrounding blocks. These people… Never have to look for more than a few minutes when friends come over. That said, it would also be nice if all the houses in the area that have garages actually used them for their cars.
So does Latino task force want affordable housing or not? They always seem to be complaining.
If you’re in affordable housing probably better to use public trans than pay monthly on a car. Surprising how many new cars pull up to these affordable housing complexes. Calling it like I see it. Just put 150k miles on my ride. Sits in the garage most days preferring to take 2 wheels.
Welcome back Wiggins