The San Francisco Planning Commission aligned with the state Thursday and voted to advance two controversial housing projects, each of which had earlier been delayed or downsized by city officials.
The commission first greenlit a 495-unit development at 469 Stevenson St., the site of a Nordstrom parking lot and a project that had been delayed by the majority of the Board of Supervisors in a now-infamous vote.
That vote, in 2022, prompted the California Department of Housing and Community Development to investigate possible violations of a state law that requires municipalities to approve and build more housing throughout the state.
On Thursday, planning commissioners voted 4-2 to move it forward, with Commissioners Kathrin Moore and Theresa Imperial voting against. The Stevenson Street project, as passed, will have 73 units that will be affordable for low- and middle-income residents, and will be developed by Build SF. Just last week, Build SF abandoned a ready-to-go 40-story housing structure at One Oak, less than a mile away from Stevenson Street; developers withdrawing from fully entitled projects is becoming a growing trend, Moore said earlier in the morning.
The commission also approved a group-housing project in the Mission that was recently under state scrutiny, a six-story, 19-unit building at 3832 18th St. between Sanchez and Church streets. The decision reverses a 2021 commission vote that had lopped off one of the stories to appease neighbors’ shadow concerns — a move state officials deemed in direct violation of the state’s density bonus.
“It isn’t that this body wantonly decried or tried to defy state law,” said commission president Rachael Tanner at Thursday’s meeting, of the 18th Street project. “But as time changed … the understanding of how the law applied to this project changed.”
The state density bonus allows a project extra height or area if it provides a certain percentage of affordable housing. The group housing project, all ownership units, promises three below-market rate units, making it eligible for a bonus.
But neighbors hated the height, which dwarfs nearby homes. While it appeared Planning Commission members thought a five-story, 19-unit design a worthy workaround — to compensate for the two units originally planned for the sixth floor, the communal kitchen would be gone — state housing officials disagreed. It sent the city two letters in 2022 noting the only exceptions to the state density law are potential health or safety issues. Shadow concerns, an earlier point of disagreement for 18th Street neighbors, are not germane.
“Denial of the density bonus was not supported by those findings, nor could they be, because there are no public health and safety impacts associated with the project,” said Brian O’Neill, an attorney representing developer M-J Mission Dolores LLC at Thursday’s meeting.
Housing and Community Development agreed, and urged San Francisco to revive the original plan. The state’s August, 2022, letter was not subtle: “HCD has enforcement authority.”
It’s yet another example of how the state is doubling down on its recent ability to force localities to meet housing goals, using new legislation, like SB35 and SB828.
Still, the state admonition on 3832 18th St. didn’t deter neighbors who, even on Thursday, attempted to persuade commissioners to deny permit approvals. Ultimately, commissioners Moore and Imperial voted against the permits for that project.
Thursday marks the third time the group-housing plan came before the Planning Commission, and O’Neill alleged that neighbors were fruitlessly scrounging for another loophole to delay the project. In February, neighbors successfully appealed the removal of an avocado tree at the property, which a Public Works employee at the time opined was actually about the proposed housing project.
But on Thursday, the victory was the state’s. As O’Neill reminded commissioners, the state “directed the city to take immediate corrective action, or face further enforcement.” Commissioners chose the former in both cases.
Yeah, I watched it all that day,
What struck me most was the ‘Poor Winner’ attitude the Yimby’s exhibited complete with the usual insults.
Particularly, the Zack’s guy who told the commission that he didn’t think they should even have to come back to pick up his just-now-legal permit to level a cute little one family Victoria and replace it with 19 people at least.
Wonder how many drive cars ?
Still, this is pretty minor when compared to the 50 story full blooded architectural erection now before Planning.
Y’all voted for this when you voted for Wiener.
Go Niners !
h.
Can you please tell how many permitted projects are not going into construction?
It’s really nice to see the California Department of Housing and Community Development put a stop to SF Planning Departments politically corrupt nonsense.
People need affordable housing.
The only county in the state that actually has some population density is getting punished by the state for not having enough. Not ironic at all.
> “It isn’t that this body wantonly decried or tried to defy state law,” said commission president Rachael Tanner at Thursday’s meeting, of the 18th Street project. “But as time changed … the understanding of how the law applied to this project changed.”
Rachael Tanner may have thought that she followed the letter of the state law when she eliminated all the common space (Oct 14, 2021), but she should have known that her actions to make the project less livable were arbitrary and exacerbate the housing shortage, since at the previous meeting (July 15, 2021) she and Sue Diamond had demanded the developer to put a fully kitchen into that same common space that she later eliminated!
I think most of the Commissioners simply don’t understand that more efficient use of land makes housing more plentiful and thus affordable, so in the absence of principles, when they see a project that is outside the norm they don’t know what to think and fall back on all manner of subjective excuses to deny it: Frank Fung complained about the 0.001% increase in shadow on the park, Kathryn Moore said that letting relatively poorer people live in Noe Valley would not advance racial and social equity (!), Theresa Imperial complained that it is not specifically for domestic abuse survivors and that other condos (but not this one) have high HOA dues, and Sue Diamond simply invoked the undesirable “neighborhood character” of a 6 story building. And the Rafael Mandelman refused to give them a fair hearing, rejecting the project for daring to quote the laws that apply.
It does not inspire confidence to see our commissioners and BoS power tripping instead of applying principles to address the housing shortage.
Voting guide if you think the rent is too damn high.
Voting against the project: Hillary Ronen, Aisha Safai, Rafael Mandelman, Gordon Mar, Shamann Walton, Dean Preston, Connie Chan, Myrna Melgar, Aaron Peskin
For: Catherine Stefani, Ahsha Safai and Matt Haney