 |
The City Planning Commission is holding public hearings on proposed revisions to the city’s Housing Element. The Housing Element is part of the city’s General Plan.
Regrettably for advocates of ownership housing, such as the San Francisco Association of REALTORS®, the Housing Element and proposed revisions to it are devoted almost exclusively to the need for affordable rental housing. But even worse, the proposed revisions contain a number of disturbing proposed new initiatives, such as substantially increasing the real property transfer tax to provide funding for affordable rental housing.
The Association of REALTORS® and the Residential Builders Association were the only organizations that testified against the proposed revisions at hearings held in April. For REALTORS® who have an interest in the proposed revisions, the Association’s testimony is reprinted below.
“To read the Planning Department’s Draft Housing Element is to be left with the impression that the city is taking all necessary and appropriate actions to provide its citizens with decent, safe and sanitary housing. But the Housing Element presents a Pollyanna version of the city’s efforts to provide housing and is silent on the causes that its housing policies have failed to meet their objectives over the years. As an example, nothing is stated in the Housing Element that would suggest that the city has discouraged housing development, as it has, by the adoption of a staggering array of officious, unreasonable and unnecessary controls on housing development. Add to that the outrageous controls that have been adopted to limit an owner’s use of property and it is little wonder that the only housing being built (except for high end single-family homes and condominiums) is being built by nonprofit housing developers who are the beneficiaries of what are tantamount to government subsidies.
“It is interesting to note that the Housing Element almost completely avoids differentiating between rental housing and ownership housing. If such a differentiation were made, it would be apparent that the Housing Element deals almost exclusively with one type of housing—rental housing. Almost nothing is said about ownership housing (except for a gratuitous reference in Policy 8.10) or the fact that San Francisco lags behind the rest of the nation with a homeownership rate of only 35 percent.
“Homeownership has its rewards, as much for the community as for owners. The Housing Element is seriously flawed by its bias in favor of rental housing and its failure to address the need to develop programs to create homeownership opportunities for San Francisco’s working population.
“The Housing Element identifies three major prerequisites that must be met in order to implement its objectives and policies. They are:
- An adequate supply of land;
- The removal of regulatory and other impediments; and
- Adequate financing.
“But what is the prospect the city will implement the Housing Element’s objectives and policies any time soon? As far as we can tell, the prospect is nonexistent, unless things change. Why? Here are some examples:
- The city insists on maintaining for other uses, land that would be ideal for housing with the addition of bus service;
- The Board of Supervisors is determined to increase regulatory and other impediments, not reduce them, as suggested by the Housing Element. Read pages 125 and 150 of the Housing Element:
- (Page 125) “The city will evaluate requiring sale price limitations on existing low- and moderate-income housing units that are proposed for conversion.”
- (Page 125) “The city will study requiring a portion of any condominium conversion subdivision to remain permanently affordable and requiring developers to construct an equivalent number of similar units elsewhere or pay an equivalent in lieu fee to the city’s Affordable Housing Development Fund.”
- (Page 150) “The city will investigate an increase in the real property transfer tax” to develop a major source of new revenue for the city that could be allocated to affordable housing; and
“The Housing Element is a biased, inconsistent and incomplete document. It should be redrafted to properly reflect political realities.”
April 2003
|
|
|
|
|
