Clamor at the Commonwealth Club
The Future of San Francisco
The Commonwealth Club held a lively discussion recently in a packed auditorium with many San Francisco residents interested in planning and environmental issues, as the city continues to grow unbridled by traditional zoning limits and concerns for the declining quality of life. Housing affordability, traffic and other growth impacts appear to be unaffected by the usual planning restrictions and state pressures. Recently proposed legislation by State Senator Scott Wiener have added to the perceived threat posed by the overblown expectations of developers for what the city’s 49 square mile size can accomodate. The panel for discussion at the Commonwealth Club meeting was made up of George Wooding, President of the Coalition for San Francisco Neighborhoods, Stuart Flashman, Environmental Attorney, and, Eric Brooks, Campaign Coordinator, Our City SF.
First, Eric Brooks laid out the financial implications of a housing bubble, and how corporate LLC investments and off-shore investment ignore the fact that there exists a large inventory of units that are deliberately being kept vacant by owners of SF property currently. This housing bubble can be seen in China also, where many cities are built and remain empty, while attention to concrete impacts on health and environmental concerns lags as development pressures for quick profits ignore the human side. In our small city and internationally, these development profits and investment strategies impact the quality of life.
Stuart Flashman, lawyer and expert in California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), set forth the intricacies of the law, and stated that now more than ever, we need to support and reinforce CEQA in its role of controlling new growth. Politicians and their developer financiers want to set aside local ability to enforce strict growth boundaries. In exchange for the chimera of affordable housing, the survival of our existing communities is threatened as planning restrictions are set aside by state legislation which would increase the density, decrease the open space and increase the height of new buildings that are meant to close the affordability gap.
George Wooding eloquently summarized the public positions that the Coalition for San Francisco Neighborhoods has endorsed in recent months, in comments supporting the rescue of our most stable neighborhoods from imminent changes that would compromise their integrity in the hope of creating more affordable housing.
~~ A.Goodman
