(Liz Sanchez-Vegas)
As the new year unfurls, there’s a glimmer of hope in San Francisco’s infamous housing crisis. On December 5, 2023 the Board of Supervisors approved a “constraints reduction ordinance” that the California Department of Housing and Community Development, known as HCD, then approved. According to the Chronicle this comes at the right time since regulators from the HCD had given the city 30 days on October 25, 2023, to come to an agreement with the Mayor London Breed-proposed ordinances. “Obviously this is great news for San Francisco,” Jeff Cretan, a spokesperson for Mayor London Breed, told the Chronicle.
Basically, the mayor’s office is excited about the board enshrining the ordinance as it streamlines housing permitting while protecting rent-controlled and historic units. While some fear developers running rampant, tearing down Coit Tower in their wake, many more are sick of the inability to build anything in the 48 hills, contributing to visible homelessness and a state mandate to build 82,000 new units. The paper called San Francisco housing policy “byzantine,” though Supervisors Aaron Peskin and Connie Chan opposed the measure.
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One of the main changes in this ordinance is the removal of a need to undergo a hearing at the Planning Commission before going forward with new projects. The question now remains, how soon can San Francisco actually get those units built, even with this new ability to hurdle over red tape? Those 82,000 units ordered by California are supposed to be fully built in the city within eight years, with 46,000 meant to be affordable to low- and moderate-income families.
Feeling optimistic, Supervisor Myrna Melgar, who co-sponsored the legislation, told the paper this is all good momentum. “Despite all the salacious stories written in the media, by and large, I feel like we all came together and worked collaboratively on this very complicated piece of legislation,” Melgar told the Chronicle.
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