January 4, 2023,
They’re not making any more land. Or are they?
Mark Twain and Will Rogers shared a belief. As Mr. Twain said, "Buy land, they're not making it anymore".
Which, in most places is true, but don’t volcanoes create more land?
Sometimes expressions, wise and well-intentioned, are not always accurate.
For example, some have felt that San Francisco is so land locked, that there is no more room for more housing?
Have you heard that one?
Certainly that perception helped drive up housing costs.
For some time, that may have been mostly true, but things are changing. Potentially, substantially.
How so?
Have you read about this huge San Francisco issue?
And you thought the housing crisis was bad.
The informative news source cnbc.com reported, “San Francisco is facing its highest office vacancy rate since 1993. Commercial real estate firm CBRE said in a recent report that 27.1 million square feet of a total of 90 million square feet is currently vacant.”
That translates to about a whopping 25 percent vacancy.
The problem started after the shelter inside mandate during the pandemic. Many companies, alarmed at first, found out it had a wonderful silver lining.
It cut their costs.
Why pay for expensive office space, with all the peripheral expenses, when you can have employees work from home and downsize your office or eliminate it entirely?
So, even those who did have office space, now appear to not want to pay for it.
We can hear San Francisco saying ouch.
Not only are businesses fleeing the city for greener pastures or even if they stay, deciding on smaller digs, even the ones who have leased office space, don’t want to pay for it.
What’s a city to do?
To help address the problem, one local legislator is admonishing to convert empty office buildings into residential buildings.
What a great and innovative idea.
Matt Haney, a Democratic state Assembly member, says tackling the empty office problem could help the city take the much-needed steps it needs to address the housing crisis.
Convert office buildings into housing.
You see, they are making more houses these days.
If that thinking spreads, imagine how that can transform land locked San Francisco.
Shall we keep going?
What about garage space? If there are less cars driving into the city, there has to be more parking spaces. True?
In terms of housing, look what San Francisco is trying to do about that.
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Board of Supervisors Approve Mayor Breed's Legislation to Expedite New Housing to Replace Gas Stations and Parking Lots
The Cars to Casas ordinance eliminates artificial density on auto-centric lots
December 07, 2022
San Francisco, CA — Today, the Board of Supervisors approved a housing ordinance introduced by Mayor London N. Breed to make it easier to build more housing to replace gas stations, parking lots, and other auto-oriented lots. The “Cars to Casas” ordinance was supported by housing and environmental activists, including YIMBY Action, the San Francisco Housing Action Coalition, and Brightline Defense.
The ordinance will increase density on auto-centric lots to be up to four units in Residential Housing (RH) zoning districts. In other zoning districts, where housing is already permitted, the density will be relaxed to be “to-form,” which means it will be set by existing height, bulk, and set back requirements etc. Height limits will not be raised in any zoning districts, only density will be relaxed. This will help transition what are under-utilized lots into desperately needed housing.
“This legislation is part of our critical work to remove barriers to building new housing,” said Mayor London Breed. “We need to keep moving solutions forward to streamline housing approvals if we are going to meet our state-mandated housing goals of building 82,000 new homes over the next eight years. We know there is much more work to do but this is a step in the right direction.”
Cars to Casas will also make it easier to transition away from auto-oriented uses by removing the existing conditional use requirement to remove an auto use, which will help cut bureaucracy, another impediment to building affordable housing.
The San Francisco Planning Department prepared a study with technical consultant Century Urban to determine how the ordinance would improve the feasibility of new housing projects across the City. The study revealed that by removing unnecessary constraints in the zoning code, this ordinance would improve project feasibility and open up new opportunities for housing production. However, given current economic conditions, this study found that feasibility remains challenging for most project types due to a mix of factors, including the City regulations and requirements, and that projects could become more feasible due to further efforts to address these issues.
The passage of this ordinance aligns with San Francisco’s pending Housing Element update, which includes policies to remove City-imposed constraints on housing production. San Francisco, like all cities in California, is in the process of approving its Housing Element, the City’s plan for meeting state-mandated housing goals. Under state law, this plan must be approved by January 31st, 2023 and then certified by the California Department of Housing and Community Development. San Francisco’s housing goals set by the state are to build 82,000 new homes over the next eight years.
In San Francisco, 47% of greenhouse gas emissions come from transportation and 41% from natural gas used in buildings. San Francisco has reduced its carbon emissions by 41% from 1990 levels, but most of that reduction has come from reducing emissions from buildings while emissions from transportation has remained relatively stable. Helping to transition lots away from auto-oriented uses will help create a City that prioritizes more sustainable development while creating more dense neighborhoods.
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