California Bill Wants To Scrap Environmental Reviews To Save Downtown San Francisco (sfchronicle.com) 177
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the San Francisco Chronicle: San Francisco's leaders have spent the past few years desperately trying to figure out how to deal with a glut of empty offices, shuttered retail and public safety concerns plaguing the city's once vibrant downtown. Now, a California lawmaker wants to try a sweeping plan to revive the city's core by exempting most new real estate projects from environmental review, potentially quickening development by months or even years. State Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, introduced SB1227 on Friday as a proposal to exempt downtown projects from the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, for a decade. The 1970 landmark law requires studies of a project's expected impact on air, water, noise and other areas, but Wiener said it has been abused to slow down or kill infill development near public transit.
"Downtown San Francisco matters to our city's future, and it's struggling -- to bring people back, we need to make big changes and have open minds," Wiener said in a statement. "That starts with remodeling, converting, or even replacing buildings that may have become outdated and that simply aren't going to succeed going forward." Eligible projects would include academic institutions, sports facilities, mixed-use projects including housing, biotech labs, offices, public works and even smaller changes such as modifying an existing building's exterior. The city's existing zoning and permit requirements would remain intact. "We're not taking away any local control," Wiener said in an interview with the Chronicle on Friday.
California Sen. Scott Wiener is proposing a bill that, he said, would make it easier for San Francisco's downtown area to recover from the pandemic. However, it's not clear how much of an impact the bill would have if it's eventually passed since other factors are at play. New construction has been nearly frozen in San Francisco since the pandemic, amid consistently high labor costs, elevated interest rates and weakening demand for both apartments and commercial space.Major developers have reiterated that they have no plans to start work on significant new projects any time soon. Last week, Kilroy Realty, which has approval for a massive 2.3 million-square-foot redevelopment ofSouth of Market's Flower Mart, said no groundbreakings are planned this year -- anywhere.
"Downtown San Francisco matters to our city's future, and it's struggling -- to bring people back, we need to make big changes and have open minds," Wiener said in a statement. "That starts with remodeling, converting, or even replacing buildings that may have become outdated and that simply aren't going to succeed going forward." Eligible projects would include academic institutions, sports facilities, mixed-use projects including housing, biotech labs, offices, public works and even smaller changes such as modifying an existing building's exterior. The city's existing zoning and permit requirements would remain intact. "We're not taking away any local control," Wiener said in an interview with the Chronicle on Friday.
California Sen. Scott Wiener is proposing a bill that, he said, would make it easier for San Francisco's downtown area to recover from the pandemic. However, it's not clear how much of an impact the bill would have if it's eventually passed since other factors are at play. New construction has been nearly frozen in San Francisco since the pandemic, amid consistently high labor costs, elevated interest rates and weakening demand for both apartments and commercial space.Major developers have reiterated that they have no plans to start work on significant new projects any time soon. Last week, Kilroy Realty, which has approval for a massive 2.3 million-square-foot redevelopment ofSouth of Market's Flower Mart, said no groundbreakings are planned this year -- anywhere.
This is a good thing (Score:3, Informative)
It's WAY too expensive to build anything there.
They need to cut regulations so that unused commercial space can be converted to housing
And no, I don't want shoddy, dangerous construction, reasonable building codes are fine, but there are way too many rules and endless lawsuits that make it impossible to build anything except ultra high end stuff
Re:This is a good thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is a good thing (Score:5, Interesting)
People and businesses won't comeback if the actual problem is still there.
So San Francisco is one of the most expensive housing markets on the planet because nobody wants to live there?
Re:This is a good thing (Score:5, Informative)
So San Francisco is one of the most expensive housing markets on the planet because nobody wants to live there?
San Francisco is in it's early Detroit phase. Crime is high, services are poor, but a lot of rich people still live there, so property is fairly valuable. However, people are starting to move out. Speculators and corporations are buying up properties as investment vehicles hoping the prices will stay high, but there is no guarantee.
The other pressure keeping prices high, which is the point of the article, is that building anything in San Francisco takes forever due to the multiple permitting processes and thusly is very expensive, even if property itself was cheap.
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Building lots of affordable housing would probably go a long way to addressing the crime problems. The other big issue is that US politics are so afraid of anything socialist, even Democrats are largely unable to do any of the things that are proven to work elsewhere in the world. Decriminalize drugs and treat them as a healthcare issue, free mental health care, social housing, strong safety nets etc.
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As I said, it has worked in other places.
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This really reeks of ignorance. San Francisco's financial district is in distress because it is an older office stock and there are enough square feet in new buildings South of Market that the flight-to-quality in lease renewals has left it in a very high vacancy rate-- bordering on 50% IIRC.
The city is still a desirable place to live, and the winter homeless situation is not bad. Summer is worse as people leave shelters, but that is different issue. Housing (rent) affordability is comparable to Long Beach,
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The one saving grace for San Francisco (and many other expensive areas in California) which will probably keep it from "going Detroit" is climate (fog beats sleet any day in my book). In addition, geography is on its side - coastal city/region and varied geography nearby making being conducive to a variety of recreational activities and make the area aesthetically pleasing.
These attributes alone make it attractive regardless if it's run by "liberals" or "conservatives" (or any other form of "idiots").
Had SF
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Re: This is a good thing (Score:5, Insightful)
reason downtown is empty is something called 'work from home' you might be familiar with
If that was the only reason, the office buildings would have been sublet or bought out a long time ago. Look at the downtown regions everywhere else. If that was the reason, this would be very pronounced everywhere, yet it's not. Just the SF Bay Area which has a net 30% drop in office occupancy and that's pretty much it, some places like Boise and Austin even saw it increase a fair bit, other places saw it decrease but not nearly as bad as SF.
Will SF turn into Detroit? I don't know, but it's stupid to just assume that it won't. I personally couldn't care less what happens to it. They made their bed. It's not as if people haven't been talking about California's horrid regulations and tax policies for decades. Sometimes, the only way people learn is after a disaster has already happened.
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reason downtown is empty is something called 'work from home' you might be familiar with
If that was the only reason, the office buildings would have been sublet or bought out a long time ago.
That is the main reason, and the other reason is that the tech industry has seen significant job loss lately. You can only sublet a building if you can find someone who wants to move in, and for those two reasons, most businesses in the Bay Area are cutting their office space, not increasing it, so there's nobody to move in.
That's why they're trying to convert some of that unused office space into residential space, but this often requires rezoning, environmental review, etc.
Look at the downtown regions everywhere else. If that was the reason, this would be very pronounced everywhere, yet it's not.
No other part of the country ha
Re:This is a good thing (Score:4, Funny)
ep, you call the cops because someone is stealing from you they'll be right there to arrest them. Oh, wait... no.
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oh look, a dips**** take from an internet troll. SF actually has *great* city services and low violent crime, and the reason downtown is empty is something called 'work from home' you might be familiar with
We're all pretty familiar with the thing called "work from home" and it's the best thing that could have happened for the tech sector. I'm exceedingly grateful that my morning commute consists of walking across the hall to my home office instead of being stuck in traffic on clogged freeways or having to ride public transit that reeks of urine and feces so I can sit in a cube farm all day.
If that means entire swaths of San Francisco's downtown district wither and die, then so be it. The dinosaurs were also k
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Gaslight much? The market is in decline because businesses and people don't feel safe. It's literally the stated problem.
"Major developers have reiterated that they have no plans to start work on significant new projects any time soon."
Expediting approval for non existent new builds won't solve the problem.
Re:This is a good thing (Score:5, Informative)
I'd argue that crime is only one of many straws on that camel's back. I've read plenty of development horror stories about San Francisco. For example, I live on the opposite side of the country, but with a bit of research, I could bring a development to a halt for a few months just by writing a letter to the right agency claiming that the development would be bad for the "character" of the area.
Yes, they need to control the crime better, but they also need to make getting construction authorized faster and more dependable. Not require the review of a half dozen different committees, any one of which can torpedo a development until their demands are met.
The net result is raising the cost of development to the point that, yes, only the highest end "luxury" housing is worth it. And will continue to be the only housing worth it until the glut is addressed, which would take decades of construction short of von neumann building robots or something.
Re:This is a good thing (Score:5, Insightful)
So you file your first complaint, let the developer work through that issue over the course of a couple months. Then file your second complaint, and that takes a couple of months.
Wash, Rinse, Repeat.
Suddenly very few developers have the stomach to develop in that area. And people wonder why there isn't any development in that area of the country.
Re:This is a good thing (Score:5, Interesting)
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If the relavent authorities had the guts to stand up to the NIMBYs and vested interests and pass laws that take away their ability to stop new housing being built, so many of the problems plaguing the bay area could be solved.
Re: This is a good thing (Score:3, Interesting)
Building things faster isn't the problem
Besides, that would involve capitalism, which every politician there knows is bad.
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Besides, that would involve capitalism, which every politician there knows is bad.
Yes and red state politicians are all Nazis. You're ridiculous.
Re: This is a good thing (Score:2)
Hmm...well, currently the only openly fascist politicians actively holding office are in the EU and some immediate surrounding countries, and that's the closest you even get to Nazi politicians. So no, not really.
Meanwhile, right here in the US we've got a lot of self-described anti-capitalist politicians, most heavily concentrated in SF and NYC.
Re: This is a good thing (Score:2)
One can go anywhere in San Francisco or New York and see capitalism alive and well
I never said otherwise. Which makes you look ridiculous.
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I never said otherwise. Which makes you look ridiculous.
Oh, a semantics debate. The true sign of an intellectual!
Fuck off with your bullshit.
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Of 23 US cities with populations of 750k or more, San Francisco is #14/23 in violent crime [sfchronicle.com]. On the subject of murders, it's even lower - #18/23 - one of the lowest among major US cities. The only thing it ranks relatively highly on is property crime, which ironically is NOT what the US right complains about when talking about SF. SF crime hit historic LOWS in 2020/2021, and in 2022 only inched back to pre-pandemic levels; it's overall been on a long-term downtrend (like most of the US).
It's a politically
Re:This is a good thing (Score:5, Interesting)
The right does mostly complain about property crime in SF: things like a news crew having their car looted [cnn.com] while they were there to report on crime, or this piece [hoover.org] complaining about the combined property and violent crime rate. This is another example, not from the right but from local residents.
That last article touches on a related problem with statistics like you cite: A major problem is that lots of crime goes unreported. That's especially the case when the city's top prosecutor is somebody like George Gascon or Chesa Boudin. The people in that neighborhood complained to the non-profit running a drug recovery center, or they used their phones. They didn't bother filling police reports, because they knew that wouldn't change anything, and so the crimes they see don't get counted in your numbers.
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The third link should have been https://abc7news.com/soma-rise... [abc7news.com], but Slashdot ate the hyperlink for some reason.
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Why do you think people turn to crime? Subquestion: After you answer "they can't afford anything otherwise" remember that housing is the single largest expense people face.
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Re:This is a good thing (Score:4, Insightful)
You need to be very careful using per-capita numbers when measuring relatively rare events like homicides in small cities, because small random fluctuations can cause big per-capita figures. I'm pretty sure I've seen numbers tossed around before where the huge homicide rate is the result of as little as one single homicide.
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You may reduce rampage style shootings, but 99% of US homicides are not rampage style. The 1950s was the safest era we had (only a little safer than today btw in terms of homicide rate), but what about 1920s? Guns were freely available back then and the homicide rate was 3 times today's. Obviously culture and economic status plays the biggest role.
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Right, so allowing guns won't magically make us safer if people want to and are motivated to do crime (as they were in the 20s).
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It's not regulation, it's the free market that makes a city with limited real estate so expensive. Speculation combined with actual demand has been driving up real estate in the area.
What is needed is rent control. So that you can fill the city with people. And that will also slightly reduce real estate prices as the incomes of lower rents won't support loan payments on overly inflated prices for apartment buildings.
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Rent control doesn't do what you think it does.
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It can be a pretty effective solution to displacement and high apartment vacancy rates (7.4% in March 2023). Consequence is you effectively take money from landlords and give it to tenants. That fixes itself though since landlords are good at getting money flowing towards themselves.
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7.4% isn't actually high. From what I've read, experts believe that 10% is needed for proper slack and competition.
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Hi from Australia, where our two biggest cities each have a vacancy rate of 0.9%.
https://www.domain.com.au/rese... [domain.com.au]
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Sounds like the revolution origin story for a sci-fi book series. I'm not saying you're wrong, but taking a step back makes our system seem crazy.
Re:This is a good thing (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not regulation, it's the free market that makes a city with limited real estate so expensive.
Perhaps, but I suspect not in this case.
WGBH actually talked about some of the topics relevant to this discussion in episode 4 of their The Big Dig podcast [wgbh.org], where they had an economist talk through why the cost of construction was so high for the Big Dig. She indicated that between the early 1960s and the late 1980s the inflation-adjusted cost to build one mile of highway tripled. It was more or less flat until the early 1970s, at which point it started ticking upwards much more rapidly.
So what happened in the early 1970s? The economist pinned it on a combination of factors. I'll try my best to summarize below, but the episode is worth a listen.
NEPA was signed into law in 1970 [wikipedia.org], which introduced the regulatory burden of producing environmental impact statements and provided private citizens with the ability to sue agencies that had aggrieved them. If federal dollars were going to your state or local project, you'd fall under NEPA too. The following year, the Citizens to Preserve Overton Park v. Volpe [wikipedia.org] ruling meant that public works projects needed to demonstrate that there was no "feasible and prudent" alternative before they could develop public land, and that they further undertook "all possible planning to minimize harm" when they did so, which increased costs further. Taken together, these provided a framework for private citizens to sue the government over pretty much any public works project, which unsurprisingly led to significantly increased costs.
But none of that really matters here because San Francisco's housing crisis is due to the government refusing to allow more housing. Simple as that. To no one's surprise except the city's, a regulatory constraint on housing supply meant that demand outstripped supply. Last I checked, they were approving new housing at less than half the rate required to keep up with new demand [sfstandard.com], let alone change the balance, so all other things being equal, things will continue to get worse.
What is needed is rent control. So that you can fill the city with people.
As to your suggestion that filling the city with people will fix things, that makes no sense in light of historical evidence to the contrary. San Francisco has had a housing crisis for as long as I can remember, while at the same time enjoying historical rental vacancy rates well below the national and state averages [deptofnumbers.com]. So while it's true their vacancy rate doubled in 2023, the preceding 14+ years prove without a doubt that packing the city full of more renters will not solve the housing crisis.
And lest anyone think otherwise, I'm fine with regulation when it's done right. San Francisco simply got it wrong.
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Use to be the SF was alive because it was full of artists who could afford living within the dens
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Chinese or Russian investor owning an empty building is not counted as a vacancy
This is simply untrue. Vacancy rates specifically count the number of unoccupied dwellings, regardless of who owns the dwelling. And while there may be absentee owners, that doesn't mean that dwellings have historically been going unoccupied (see historical data linked earlier).
As for local benefit, San Francisco has toyed with the idea of a vacancy tax (as some other cities have done) to incentivize owners who are sitting on unoccupied dwellings to make get their properties occupied.
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Housing is the issue, plain and simple.
* Historically, people have had to either pay exorbitant rents, or live a long commute away from work, because housing costs were too high
* There's now too much commercial property relative to demand
It doesn't take a genius to figure out what solution needs to happen here...
Ineffective law (Score:3, Insightful)
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Spotted the person whose entire world view is shaped by conservative talking heads.
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So none of that is true? No lie, I work with someone who doesn't mind that 2 blocks away from his home there is open drug use and rampant crime. He was just telling me how it's "a little scary" to walk through that part of town but democratic talking points democratic talking points equity diversity so it's ok.
I walked through downtown Seattle and it's a friggin zombie infested dystopia, for real. I couldn't believe it. Lib cities really are trash... But keep blaming those conservatives for noticing. Go
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I live an hour North of SF. There are no rivers of sewage everywhere. Due to homelessness there are a few more areas then in the past that arent safe to go into (pretty much every major city has some sort of area that is high crime) and yes this certainly needs to be resolved. Never the less there are no environmental problems as the above user stated from human shit in the city. If I'm wrong all you have to do is cite a source though.
...but democratic talking points democratic talking points equity diversity so it's ok.
No one but conservatives putting words into the mouths of leftists say a
Wiener is right for a change (Score:2)
CEQA stops so much that should be happening from actually happening. It should be fixed or tossed in the shredder. I'd prefer a fix, paring it down by 90%, but beggars can't be choosers.
Open Minds (Score:3)
When I hear San Francisco talk about having open minds to themselves....
--
"Truth is, I'll never know all there is to know about you just as you will never know all there is to know about me." - Tom Hanks
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Please, try being from a blue state and going into parts of the deep South. The second they hear your voice and can tell "you dont belong" you wont be treated well at all by quite a lot of the white people even if you're also white.
Local speaking (Score:4, Interesting)
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You like the downtown area from 5th to 10th on Market?
The Tenderloin?
Ok.
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That has always been a scary area and is unlikely to ever sustain a lasting renaissance. Massive redevelopment would shift the problem a bit, but there are significant challenges with doing so.
Re:Local speaking (Score:5, Interesting)
The only thing to bill would help with is what to do with all the vacant office space, and even then that would barely budge it. How do you build in a place where construction workers can't afford to live, especially if you need construction workers to convert places to housing in order to lower housing costs in the first place? It's a classic chicken before the egg scenario without an easy answer.
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I thought they did it for Xi Jinping:
https://sfstandard.com/2023/11... [sfstandard.com]
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All that cutting environmental protections will
Re: Local speaking (Score:2)
Is that really an issue? Living near Toronto, many of the new condo Towers have floor to ceiling window on nearly every exterior surface. Our weather is much colder than San Francisco and the design works just fine, although it's not ideal for efficiency. A recent Airbnb I stayed in had to warn tha
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Both the bill and story are out of date. Mayor (good job there) has managed to clean up the streets
I was in SF in December and I was expecting to see a horror show but at least the area I was in was completely fine, cleaner than it was five years ago
Re:Local speaking (Score:5, Interesting)
And statistics bear up your experience. San Francisco is higher than average in property crime but lower than average in violent crime, very low in murder, and has - like the US as a whole - been on a long-term crime downturn.
The amount of disconnect in the US, esp. among the right (but also the left) between perceptions and measurable reality in a wide range of things has me deeply concerned. Like, for example, a recent survey [theguardian.com] showed that 60% of Republicans and 40% of Democrats believed that unemployment was nearly at a 50-year high (it's actually at a nearly 50 year low). You see the same thing in surveys about violent crime, with surveys showing year after year [gallup.com] that people think it's rising, despite the fact that it's been long-term plunging [pewresearch.org].
And while part of this lies on politicians who exploit peoples' worries for votes by lying to or exaggerating problems for votes, by far most of this falls on the media. Every time I visit the US I'm just shocked by the awful state of the US media, where everything seems to be set up to maximize how much each group hates the other and maximize their fear, with endless focus on the worst examples that can be dug up of actions from the other side to create false perceptions of commonality, and with every story spun as hyperpartisan. "This old woman slipped in the rain on her way home from the grocery store. HERE'S WHY IT'S..."{Fox: "THE DEMOCRATS" / CNN: "THE REPUBLICANS"} "... FAULT, and how they're coming for YOU next!"
Re: Local speaking (Score:3)
The unemployment rate counts unemployment claims. Six months after the claim you are dropped from the rate. That means that the worse unemployment gets, the more of a lie the unemployment rate is. It is literally built in.
Consequently what we actually should be doing is counting the employment rate. And we can do that with tax returns. I'll give you exactly one guess as to why we don't do that.
You can however do it yourself using the labor participation rate. Over the last twenty years it has improved five
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I miss the good ol' days where all we had to worry about was whether our neighbour was a communist.
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The amount of disconnect in the US, esp. among the right (but also the left) between perceptions and measurable reality in a wide range of things has me deeply concerned. Like, for example, a recent survey [theguardian.com] showed that 60% of Republicans and 40% of Democrats believed that unemployment was nearly at a 50-year high (it's actually at a nearly 50 year low)....
The data you quote shows that the perception is wrong in both groups, to almost the same amount. And perception on crime is notoriously detached from reality, in all demographics in all first world countries.
Why force this into a political left/right characterization?
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Hypocrites (Score:2)
They loved these environmental reviews when other people were impacted but they suddenly find them inconvenient for their own plans so they gotta goooooooo!
pure nimbyism (Score:3, Insightful)
There absolutely needs to be environmental impact laws, because real estate developers are parasites that will ruin an area to make a buck.
But San Francisco and similar cities have a very strong streak of maintaining property values by simply not allowing anything else to be built.
As always it's balance.
The most dysfunctional thing in America is the court system. It's absolutetly controlled by money.
Even when justice is served it's delayed.
You have money , you can tie it up in the court for YEARS. Poor neighborhoods get bulldozed immediately, or have highways put through them.
Re: pure nimbyism (Score:2)
San Francisco not allowing things to be built? I see you aren't familiar. As someone who has watched all his favorite things in SF destroyed by gentrification involving new buildings being built and the new residents chasing the old institutions out of town, I suggest you try checking in with reality.
RIP clubtroc
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There absolutely needs to be environmental impact laws, because real estate developers are parasites that will ruin an area to make a buck.
Environmental impact laws are far more important for new developments rather than redevelopments. We're not talking about building new housing out in a natural park, we're talking about replacing existing offices. Most of what goes into environmental impact in such projects can be address with basic minimum building codes.
Donâ(TM)t let moneyed bros skip regulations (Score:2)
Now that theyâ(TM)ve convinced us the world has ended in the SF Bay Area and we need (expensive housing, fascist policing, major changes), theyâ(TM)ll try to get us to allow forgiving regulations and taxes to fast track everything. Donâ(TM)t let them get away with it.
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San Fran is a helluva drug. (Score:2)
California Bill Wants To Scrap Environmental Reviews To Save Downtown San Francisco
When I first read the headline, I comically thought to myself that a city in California was attempting to ban anyone from talking about the petri dish "environment" that has become downtown San Francisco of late.
The actual reality, is only mildly less comical. Next thing you know they'll be offering tax breaks on sidewalk shit-washing services (limited to once a month in accordance with all those Go-Green water usage bans in place to save billions of gallons for the corruptly exempt Almond Industrial Compl
Environmental reviews are fine (Score:2)
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What exactly causes environmental reviews to last that long?
No. (Score:2)
Let them rot in what they've set up for themselves. Let them prove how great their environmental obsessions are and how they'll save the world, nay the country, nay their CITY.
Why would you want to build in an earthquake zone? (Score:2)
There is a 73% risk of a magnitude 6.7 earthquake in the Bay Area within the next twenty years.
Right underneath San Francisco is the San Andreas Fault, which has a lower incident probability than the rest of the region but a risk of higher magnitude.
AFAIK, downtown San Francisco is one of the areas in the region most susceptible to liquefaction = the earth will turn into quicksand when the earthquake hits.
That is not anywhere where I would like to live when it happens.
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Why not? It's a known problem that can be solved with engineering. There's a reason why earthquakes in SF / Japan today do only a tiny fraction of the damage of say the earthquake which devastated Turkey last year.
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Bad policy and a bad look (Score:2)
Gentrification (Score:2)
Price out the culture that made the city desirable, and this is what you get.
Always the same red herring with developer shills. (Score:2)
No!!! (Score:2)
Vacancy too high? Build more. (Score:2)
The idiots who bought S.F. real estate at $2000/sf need to lose a ton of money.
Anything else just makes the problem worse.
Relaxing building codes won't help.
pluses and minuses (Score:2)
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Believes that the good people of the city should be able to go about their business on a daily basis and not have to see or deal with homeless people on the street doing the things that they do. Basically, the progressive take on Newsom was that he wanted to hide the homeless away somewhere. Get them out of our sight without really helping them.
I am just telling you what people thought at the time (I was there). Not trying to make a statement about republicans or democrats, etc. Newsom, at least back then
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In urban areas where there is no air, water, or soil to damage and no plants or critters to protect
So, San Fransisco is in the vacuum of space and they still can't get self-absorbed blowhards to come there? Must be something in their ground water then. Oh, wait.....
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Those of you who campaigned for lockdowns should be ashamed. The devastation they caused, for NO benefit at all, is permanent.
The billionaires in control, perpetrated the lockdowns. The business result of that, were billionaires getting even richer.
If you still assume they view a larger bank account and even more control and influence as “devastation”, you clearly do not understand the only language Greed understands and respects. No benefit my ASS. Stop being delusional about the end result, and you might just recognize abuse when they do it again.