Scott Wiener and the housing industry
From the Berkeley Daily Planet:
Robert Brokl
June 14, 2019
You have to hand it to Senator Scott Wiener. He never gives up flogging for the housing industry. Last year, SB-827, this year, in slightly modified form, SB-50. Wiener's bill has stalled in the Senate, but his mantra and methods haven’t changed much. Cite a manifest problem, in this case homelessness and a lack of affordable housing, relentlessly posit the same, and only, solution over and over---just build more housing, and the problem will be solved. Repeat.
But why should he change? The California Building Industry Association (CBIA) has picked Wiener as Legislator of the Year, and the bulk of his campaign contributions come from builders. (from “Scott Wiener’s SB 50 is a WIMBY Bill.” (Wall St. in My Back Yard.)
As Naomi Klein explained in Shock Doctrine, even crisis and calamities can be opportunities for consolidation and amassing of power and profit.
SB-50, and SB-827 before that, would preempt local zoning "near transit and jobs," eliminating local controls or input to allow up to 85 feet high condo and apartment buildings. In San Francisco, this definition would mean almost all local zoning control would be eliminated by state diktat to solve the housing “crisis.”
But there are reasons why the bills have so many skeptics, including the very groups and people that might seemingly benefit. More market rate housing is NOT going to get housing for people sleeping on the streets or in cars, nor assist the working poor (those with "low-mod” income levels in the Bay Area would be considered wealthy in many parts of the country) who could really benefit from affordable housing.
According to the June, 2018 Fortune, households of four people in San Francisco, San Mateo, or Marin counties earning $117,000/yr. are considered “low income” according to HUD guidelines.
Wiener and his developer allies make the simplistic argument that building more housing, even all luxury housing, will ultimately bring down the cost of all housing, the-supply-and-demand solution. Never mind that “trickle down” originated with Reagan and that Trump's single-minded pursuit of the recent tax cuts, supposedly to lift all of us up, disproportionately benefited the wealthy...
Labels: BART, Bay Area, Berkeley, California, City Government, Democratic Party, Homelessness, Housing in the City, Scott Wiener, Tech, Trump, YIMBYs
posted by Rob Anderson @ 3:19 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
"n San Francisco, this definition would mean almost all local zoning control would be eliminated by state diktat to solve the housing “crisis.”"
"diktat"?????
The elephant in the room that on one EVER talks about is the vast concentration of jobs and more in the pipeline as the FAANG companies and other large start-ups continue to build or occupy more office towers/campi in SV, SJ and SF. Politicians should be pleading with them to stop bringing jobs here and establish other urban centers--hopefully where there is a suitable housing supply so as not to replicate what has been going on here (Boise, Portland, Nashville, e.g., suffer relatively similar fates). Sophisticated video conferencing/virtual meetings can substitute for workers concentrating here and can be positioned in less expensive areas of the US. Stop attracting high-paying jobs to the Bay Area. If tech workers really want to work for those companies, they will move to where they are if they are relative urbane cities/regions and will have a chance to actually purchase a home eventually and still earn a nice income. Continuing to concentrate workers here with a transportation system that is 20 years away from absorbing these new arrivals is just poor planning (hear that SPUR?!) Yes, build more housing at a reasonable rate--stop concentrating more and more in the Hub Van Ness area. (Will Van Ness station become the next crowded Embarcadero station equivalent?) Position 7-story apartments of reasonable size in some outer neighborhoods to spread "the burden."
More important is the demand part of the equation. In San Francisco the demand is so great that no amount of new housing built will make housing "affordable," which should always be put in quotation marks for this city. Instead, doing what people like Scott Wiener are advocating will just turn the city into a completely different place, cramming a larger and larger population into a very limited geographical area.
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