The litigation challenging Pleasanton’s housing cap has been in the works since 2006 and was reinstated in 2008.  In 2009, Attorney General Jerry Brown saw this case as an opportunity to augment his ever-growing portfolio on climate change, which includes not just lawsuits, but also comment letters that inform local governments when their efforts at planning and environmental review inadequately document impacts related to greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.  Brown initially provided Pleasanton with such a comment letter (PDF), informing the City that its updated General Plan and corresponding EIR were inconsistent, and therefore inadequate, as long as Measure GG’s housing cap was retained.  The Pleasanton situation fits especially well into Brown’s climate change portfolio, because Measure GG, if allowed to continue into perpetuity, would ultimately result in a gross housing-jobs imbalance.  Although Pleasanton was projected to nearly double its workforce by 2025, its residential capacity would remain frozen in time.  That means the vast majority of that workforce would be required to commute long distances from the Bay Area and the Central Valley on Interstate 580 and other heavily congested freeways, thereby increasing greenhouse gas emissions.

Despite Brown’s commentary, the City stuck to its story, claiming that the housing cap was simply an example of a municipality legally bringing to bear its land use powers.  Brown then joined Urban Habitat’s litigation in 2009, which increased the publicity of the case while boosting Brown’s climate change credentials.  In August 2009, the court refused to dismiss the case, and now, in March 2010, the court has finally invalidated the housing cap.

Judge Roesch’s Decision

Last summer, I wrote a post that went into a fair amount of detail describing the General Plan, state housing requirements, Pleasanton’s growth projections, and the nexus to climate change.  I won’t repeat all of that information here, but if you are interested in more detail, or simply would like to refresh on the background, please check out that previous post.

The abridged version is that the state’s Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) is the result of a process that assigns to regions within California a certain number of housing units at all income levels.  The expectation is that regions will plan for the future, in order to accommodate California’s growing population.  The Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) then translates those projections to the level of local governments within the nine-county Bay Area, so that each jurisdiction absorbs its fair share of the region’s housing need.  Measure GG is clearly problematic, because over time, ABAG would continue to assign housing allocations to Pleasanton — but Measure GG’s constraints would preclude the City from planning and approving those future units.  From Judge Roesch’s decision (PDF):

It is self-evident that the City cannot comply with the State statue [sic] requiring the City to accommodate its RHNA when the city is not permitted by its local law, Measure GG, to allow the number of housing units to be built that would satisfy the RHNA.

Indeed, Pleasanton is unable to accommodate the 3,277 homes it is assigned for the 2007-2014 RHNA planning period, being only about two thousand units short of reaching the cap.  The City also failed to account for some housing units that it had been assigned in the previous planning period, which ended in 2007.

As of the time of this writing, the Pleasanton City Council has not yet spoken to this issue, nor is it clear whether the City will seek an appeal.  It would be preferable for the City to move on, accept this decision, and carry out the rezoning necessary to comply with the ruling.  The City’s basic premise — that a municipality’s land use powers reign supreme — can only go so far.  Although local governments in California have traditionally retained essentially complete authority over land use decisions, the State has a clear interest in ensuring that all its citizens are properly housed.  The RHNA is a vehicle, albeit a rather weak one, that provides the State with a measure of oversight to ensure that this important interest is fulfilled.  Where the State has provided such a framework to guide local action, State mandates necessarily preempt local regulations.  Again, from Roesch’s decision, quoting the state Supreme Court:

“The Legislature has specified certain minimum standards for local zoning regulations” … even though it “has carefully expressed its intent to retain the maximum degree of local control …” … “Local legislation in conflict with general law is void.”

The City must know it is caught in a tough spot, and its own actions within the past few months suggest that it anticipated an unfavorable ruling.  The City amended Municipal Code § 17.36.060 (limiting building permits for new residential units) so that it allowed an exception to the building permit cap, if necessary to comply with the RHNA.  Introducing this exception eliminated a conflict with state law, at least with respect to the annual building permit cap.

The City also passed an ordinance, which approved the rezoning of three parcels in Hacienda Business Park to permit mixed-use development.  But Section 5 of that same ordinance refused to approve any mixed-use or residential development plan proposed for those rezoned parcels, until “PUD Major Modification for the entire Hacienda Business Park” had been completed.  Judge Roesch did not buy it, observing that “could take up a period of time ranging from one year to forever.”

The Hacienda Business Park rezoning, Roesch noted, “may start a process to cure the City’s failure in this matter, but is wholly inadequate to be considered a cure.”

Roesch then ordered Pleasanton to implement “non-illusory zoning changes” necessary to cure its housing shortfall from the previous RHNA planning period, which ended in 2007.  He also ordered the City to strike Measure GG (and related Measures PP and QQ) from all planning documents, and to freeze construction and development permits until the City’s General Plan is fixed.

The Measure GG housing cap placed the City of Pleasanton, as Judge Roesch aptly put it in his decision, “in clear violation” of state law.  Indeed, the notion of a strict numerical limit on housing units is fundamentally incompatible with the philosophy underpinning  California’s housing law — which both accepts population growth as a reality and at least attempts to hold local governments accountable, by requiring that they plan for future need rather than sticking their collective heads in the sand.  It would certainly not be fair for Pleasanton to readily accept job growth within its city limit but then refuse to absorb residential growth.  And yet, continued application of Measure GG would have produced precisely that perverse result.  Judge Roesch is to be commended for finally overturning Measure GG.

Board of Supervisors President David Chiu has introduced, and the Board has subsequently discussed, legislation concerning garages in certain parts of Chiu’s home District 3.  The legislation does not address existing garages, but rather, future garages that have yet to be proposed and installed.  The need for this legislation is perhaps epitomized by the Ellis Act eviction sought against low-income seniors at the building on Jasper Place, in which one tenant committed suicide, and the advertisement for the property boasted of the property’s “potential for parking” — a cold swap of human being for automobile.  But Jasper Place is just one case study of the more prevalent issue in parts of District 3, as well as other locations around the city: Ellis Act evictions, followed shortly by applications for garages to be carved out of the newly-vacated space.  Examining Department of Building Inspection and Rent Board records more closely, it was determined that of at least 166 Ellis Act evictions carried out in recent years that were followed by garage applications, roughly half of them were located within District 3.  And that is the problem that inspired this legislation.

At its February 9, 2010 meeting, the Board of Supervisors passed the ordinance on its first reading, with 7 ayes (Campos, Chiu, Daly, Dufty, Mar, Maxwell, Mirkarimi) and 2 noes (Chu, Elsbernd).  The ordinance is expected to be finally passed at the Board’s February 23 meeting.

So what exactly does this legislation do?  The first thing to remember is that it is limited to specific sections within Chiu’s District 3.  Generally speaking, the legislation aims to address the problem of evictions that result in new garages — at once protecting affordable housing supply, while encouraging a livable city and supporting sound urban design principles.  At the same time, it eliminates minimum off-street parking requirements in various parts of District 3.  Here are the highlights:

1. Requires a conditional use authorization to install a garage in an existing building. This is really the centerpiece of the legislation.  Someone seeking to install a garage in an existing building will have to seek a conditional use authorization in order to do so, and the conditional use then becomes the mechanism to ensure that the big policy goals are met.  Section 303 of the Planning Code sets out criteria that apply to conditional uses generally.  However, in addition to Section 303, this legislation imposes an additional list of hurdles that garage proposals must meet in order to be authorized.  Garage proposals may not displace a residential unit, and there must be a record of no no-fault evictions for the past ten years.  Curb cuts should be oriented to minimize the loss of on-street parking, and the new garage shall not take more than two on-street parking spots.  The sidewalk must remain inviting for pedestrians and cannot deteriorate on account of the garage; specifically, it must be at least 6 feet wide, and may not introduce a slope greater than 2%.  Sidewalks on transit preferential streets and neighborhood commercial streets may never be narrowed.  The garage must also comply with other historic resources and design requirements, as applicable.

The legislation requires Planning to consult DPW and MTA (the other city agencies implicated in the garage approval process) about specifics of the garage proposal and ensure there are no glaring problems with it before the Planning Commission grants any conditional use authorization.  Finally, please note that this more exacting conditional use process for garages only applies to certain areas: the North Beach NCD, the Broadway NCD, parts of Chinatown, and a new special use district also defined in this legislation (see #2 below).

2. Creates a Telegraph Hill-North Beach Residential Special Use District for the purposes of requiring a garage conditional use authorization (see #1 above), as well as to eliminate minimum off-street parking requirements (see #3 below).

3. Eliminates minimum off-street parking requirements and revises parking controls in Chinatown, the North Beach NCD, the Broadway NCD, and the new residential special use district (see #2 above).  In Chinatown, the North Beach NCD, and the Broadway NCD, up to 0.5 parking spaces per unit is permitted by right, and up to 0.75 is allowed with conditional use.  In the residential special use district, the controls are more relaxed: up to 0.75 is permitted by right, while up to 1.0 is allowed with conditional use.

4. Prohibits driveways altogether on important commercial and pedestrian street frontages: Columbus Avenue (between Washington/Montgomery and North Point), Broadway (between Mason and The Embarcadero), as well as alleys in Chinatown.

Both the new obstacles to garages, as well as the elimination of minimum off-street parking, are good moves in Chinatown and North Beach, because they push back and scrutinize attempts to build more storage space for cars.  This is especially critical in dense District 3 neighborhoods, whose already clogged streets can scarcely take the hit to livability brought about by policies that encourage car use and ownership.

In some sense, there is nothing new about the good policy underpinning this legislation.  Numerous provisions of San Francisco’s General Plan, coupled with recent City efforts at comprehensive neighborhood land use planning, have explicitly recognized that garage entrances and exits must be placed carefully, so as to minimize their interference with active neighborhood streets and maximize safety to pedestrians.  But in another sense, this legislation is new — simply because many city neighborhoods do not yet enjoy the protection afforded by this more sensitive treatment of garages, even if they would benefit from such protection.  The City’s approach to garage planning has basically been to not plan them — at least, not in a systematic fashion that reaches citywide.

In regard to that last point, this legislation is no different.  The area of applicability contains a disproportionately high number of Ellis Act evictions that later result in garage production — but geographically, the area is indeed quite small: not even one full supervisorial district, but only parts of one.  It is, as Supervisor Chiu put it, “narrowly tailored” to address a particular problem in a particular place.  But even though the legislation does not take the City’s current piecemeal garage policy and transform it into a unified, coherent, citywide policy, it at least adds a dose of sanity to, and sets a model for, the garage discussion.  My hope is that it will instigate a continued discussion throughout the city, and in the Planning Department, about the value of protecting affordable housing supply and making it difficult to allocate space for automobiles, all in one fell swoop.

While the legislation at issue here aims to block certain conversions of living space into garage space, there is a distinct, but related discussion also worth having, which is the mirror image: the conversion of existing garage space into housing units.  Both discussions are valuable, because both potentially lead to legislative solutions that promise a less auto-dependent, more vibrant city.

But one major exception to that general rule is housing. The State of California requires that General Plans contain a set of elements, which lay out a blueprint and policy direction to guide future development. Among those elements, the Housing Element is singled out as special, in that it must be updated every five years in accordance with the Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA). The state Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) and ABAG will project the number of housing units that the Bay Area will need to accommodate for the next several years, at four income levels (very low, low, moderate, and above moderate), and then will assign a housing share to governments throughout the Bay Area, ensuring that the region, as a whole, meets the required total. Each local government then updates its Housing Element every five years, specifying how it will accommodate its share of the regional housing need. Cities throughout the Bay Area have been engaged in this process this year.

This process ensures that local governments plan to accommodate housing units that are accessible to a range of income levels. Without such a procedure in place, it’s easy to imagine what could happen. Many cities — whose elected officials might simply translate the parochial demands of a local NIMBY group into something resembling legislation — would shirk on their obligation to ensure the production of housing units, particularly affordable units. They might, for instance, amend the zoning code to contain a set of requirements that are a proxy for wealth, ensuring that only affluent citizens can afford to live there. Other cities might freeze growth altogether, thinking only of what will happen within their city limits and ignoring what the effect would be outside. The point is that without a state mandate prohibiting that sort of behavior, it would be difficult or impossible for California to accommodate, in a just and equitable fashion, a population that is projected to increase to 60 million by the year 2050. The state has an enormous interest in ensuring that all of its citizens, of all income levels, are safely housed; but accomplishing this goal requires the cooperation of local governments, who, after all, are empowered to control land use through zoning.

The City of Pleasanton’s Faulty General Plan

So what happens when, despite the state’s requirement, a city tries to shrug off its obligation to accommodate its fair share of housing growth? Then, the State must step in — like it did yesterday, when Attorney General Jerry Brown finally took action against the City of Pleasanton’s housing cap. In 1996, Pleasanton adopted Measure GG, which instituted a housing cap — no more than 29,000 units could be built within the city. Since 2006, the City had already faced lawsuits because of this provision, and in January 2009, Jerry Brown submitted comments (PDF) on the Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) of Pleasanton’s General Plan update. In his comments, Brown indicated quite unambiguously that the housing cap was problematic. Now, in just a dozen pages (PDF), Brown clarifies how the Pleasanton cap violates state housing law. It basically comes down to the numbers. ABAG’s projections require that the City accommodate 3,277 housing units by the year 2014. But the City is only 2,007 units short of reaching the housing cap of 29,000 units. With the cap in place, not even those 3,277 units could not be built — to say nothing of the units that ABAG projections would call for after 2014. And, in fact, the City even still has to make up missing housing units from the last RHNA planning period, which ended in 2007.

The housing cap does not permit any exceptions — for instance, an exception that would allow the City to zone for the 1,270 additional units that would be needed to comply with the current RHNA. By not allowing such an exception, Pleasanton’s housing cap is in direct conflict with the state requirement. The housing cap could be struck down on that basis, but there is still another reason to strike it down. In order for a General Plan to be valid, it must be internally consistent. Pleasanton’s General Plan, however, contains a fatal flaw of inconsistency. The 29,000-unit housing cap is contained in the Land Use Element. The Housing Element, on the other hand, admits that the housing cap is an obstacle that prevents the City from meeting its housing allocation. The Housing Element, in accordance with the RHNA, encourages the production of moderate, low, and very-low income housing units to meet Pleasanton’s need. But that will be difficult to do, so long as the City enforces the 29,000-unit housing cap — particularly since the City is now only 2,007 units shy of maxing out. So the housing cap creates an internal inconsistency that renders the General Plan invalid. Removing the housing cap would, of course, remove the inconsistency, and would also remove the conflict with state law.

The Climate Change Connection

What continues to be interesting here is Jerry Brown’s consistent emphasis on climate change. In this case, Pleasanton’s General Plan just straight-up violates state housing requirements, and the City’s housing cap could be invalidated on that basis alone. Indeed, in his formal challenge of the housing cap, Brown focuses on the state’s Planning and Zoning Law to make the case. In supplementary materials, however, Brown has embraced a policy discussion that goes beyond simply pointing out the literal legal problem. In his January 2009 comments on the General Plan DEIR, he criticized the City for not adequately considering the climate change impacts of the Plan. (Amazingly, the City had claimed that a 46% increase in vehicle miles traveled was an insignificant impact!) This is an environmental issue, not a housing issue. More recently, Brown explicitly tied the housing cap to its effect on travel patterns and air quality — adding his voice to the chorus chanting about how focused growth and smart land use patterns are a critical component of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Interstate 580 through the Tri-Valley, one of the Bay Area’s most congested freeways, is surrounded by suburban sprawl. Photo courtesy of Flickr user Michael Patrick.

It’s a classic example of what we observed in the beginning — a city, unless subject to an overarching regional or state mandate, will likely prioritize local parochial interests above the greater good. Pleasanton instituted a housing cap while thinking only about the perceived desirable effect it would have within the city limits — but it did not account for the effects of that cap on the greater region. Within about a decade, the number of jobs in Pleasanton almost doubled, reaching about 58,110 employees in 2005; that number has since grown to 61,100 jobs. But while Pleasanton has cleared space for this job growth, it has not kept up with making space for housing growth. As a result, ABAG found that in 2005, 79% of Pleasanton’s workforce lived outside the city limit, and a full 50% of the workforce endured long commutes from outside the Tri-Valley area. The City planned to continue allowing more office and commercial development, so that by 2025, Pleasanton was projected to nearly double its workforce once again, to 105,000 jobs. But all the while, the housing cap would be maintained, essentially freezing the population at about 78,200 residents for the rest of time. By not providing sufficient housing that would allow people who work in Pleasanton to also live there, the city is essentially forcing long, single-occupancy vehicle commutes — increasing emissions, adding more cars to extremely congested stretches of freeway, and pushing the region further into nonattainment. Pleasanton’s annual carbon dioxide output, which was 1.388 million tons in 2008, would increase to 1.940 million tons by 2025 if the housing cap were to be maintained. The housing cap would also prevent Pleasanton from developing vacant land near its BART station as densely as it should. Restricting growth near BART would diminish the value of this valuable asset, and it would prevent growth in the one place in Pleasanton where it makes the most sense. The housing cap, a purely local requirement, thus carries with it regionally detrimental externalities.

In this sense, Brown’s challenge — although grounded in housing requirements, rather than environmental requirements — may nonetheless be seen as the latest in a string of events that indicate Brown’s stance on the climate change crisis. AB 32 requires that emissions in California be reduced to 1990 levels by 2020; but in the absence of the anticipated panoply of regulations from the Air Resources Board, which will translate AB 32′s broad requirements into more focused action, cities and counties have been uncertain as to what their exact obligations are. Despite (or perhaps because of) that uncertainty, Brown has made it clear on numerous occasions that local and regional governments may not simply ignore the adverse impacts their actions could have on air quality — such as in 2007, when he scolded San Bernardino County, and also last year, when he scolded the Bay Area’s own MTC. And now, with this latest lawsuit against the City of Pleasanton, Brown reminds us of the spirit underlying SB 375, by putting on display the interplay between housing, transportation, and climate change. It is so refreshing to see that someone in our government gets it.

Eddy and Taylor; courtesy of David Baker + Partners.

The third building in this trio, 168-186 Eddy/238 Taylor, is planned for the northeast corner of Eddy & Taylor, where it would replace a 22,334 square foot surface parking lot. The building would be about 130 feet tall and mixed-use, potentially with a grocery store on the ground floor that would improve the neighborhood’s access to fresh food and produce. The Planning Department has issued a Preliminary Mitigated Negative Declaration (link to 8.2 MB PDF) explaining its determination that the project does not require an EIR to evaluate significant adverse effects to the environment. The analysis in that document assumes a building containing up to 178 units, and the project website contemplates 143 units (44 one-bedroom, 77 two-bedroom, and 22 three-bedroom) at a density of 280 units/acre. The project would provide the required bicycle parking, but would have zero off-street car parking, for both the residential and commercial components. The emphasis on multiple bedrooms indicates that, like 125 Mason, Eddy & Taylor is especially geared toward housing low-income and homeless families in the Tenderloin. The architect is David Baker + Partners, who also designed the 67-unit Curran House, another TNDC property just south of the Eddy & Taylor parcel. Additional renderings of the Eddy & Taylor project can be found at the project website.

In August 2006, the California legislature passed the Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32), and the Governor approved it one month later, on September 27, 2006. AB 32 aims to transform California into a global leader in the climate change battle, requiring that greenhouse gas emissions levels be reduced to 1990 levels by the year 2020. AB 32 charges the California Air Resources Board (CARB) with several tasks, including: (1) adopt and enforce regulations that require the reporting of emissions; (2) create a scoping plan to provide a strategy for reducing emissions; and (3) adopt and enforce regulations that achieve AB 32′s emission reduction mandates. AB 32 requires that CARB adopt such regulations via an open public process. It further requires CARB to consult other state agencies, particularly the Energy Commission and the Public Utilities Commission, and it encourages CARB to study other emissions reductions programs, both domestic and foreign, when crafting its own plan.

We will need to implement a varied array of programs to achieve AB 32′s targets, but transportation accounts for over 40% of greenhouse gas emissions statewide, and almost 30% of emissions come from automobiles and light trucks — so reducing transportation emissions is a major piece of the puzzle. Of particular interest here is how smart land use and transportation planning can be implemented to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the face of California’s projected population growth. Legal challenges will provide the mechanism by which CARB’s AB 32 regulations can be enforced, so the momentum has been building to enact state legislation that will strengthen the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) to make it a more effective tool for enforcing AB 32.

Enter SB 375, authored by Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento). First introduced in February 2007 and passed just last week by the state legislature, SB 375 now awaits the Governor’s signature. SB 375 is a complicated, multifaceted bill, but its overall message could not be clearer: transportation, housing, and land use — although traditionally placed in different thought boxes — are, in fact, closely intertwined, and the intersection area should be leveraged as a powerful tool to protect the environment and reduce emissions. In that sense, SB 375 is rightly hailed as a landmark piece of legislation.

The first section of SB 375 focuses on transportation planning — specifically, on the activities of California’s metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs). Here in the Bay Area, our local MPO is the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. SB 375 requires each MPO to create a Sustainable Communities Strategy (SCS) component to its Regional Transportation Plan (RTP). Based on the RTP’s planning vision, the SCS for a particular region would evaluate where housing growth in that region can be accommodated in a way that encourages people to spend more time on transit and less time in the automobile, thus reducing emissions from automobiles and light trucks. CARB will provide each MPO with region-specific targets for reducing emissions by a certain amount by the year 2020 and by 2035. CARB will then review the RTP-SCS adopted by each of California’s MPOs to determine if the emission reduction targets are met. Starting in the year 2012, transit-oriented development that is consistent with the SCS would then be eligible for regional funding; and in order to incentivize smart growth, these funds would not be available for non-compliant projects. But what happens if a particular SCS does not meet CARB’s emission reduction targets? More on that in an upcoming post.

The second section of SB 375 is about housing. State law requires cities and counties to include a housing element in their general plans, which describes how each local jurisdiction plans to rezone its land so that it can house its fair share of projected regional growth at different income levels, as set forth in the Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA). SB 375 would enact a number of technical changes, including a different schedule for carrying out the RHNA process. The main goal underlying these amendments is to coordinate transportation and housing planning — in particular, to allocate housing in a way that is consistent with the growth blueprint that each MPO lays out in its RTP-SCS.

The third and last section of SB 375 concerns the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). This is my personal favorite section of the bill, because CEQA reform is absolutely central to this discussion. CEQA demands that study of environmental impacts be carried out before going through with major projects, and that the studies be released in the form of an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) that is made available for public commentary; the EIR is then to be revised to respond to that commentary. Producing (and in many cases, defending the validity of) an EIR requires a lot of time and expense. Making the EIR process less time-consuming for the type of projects we would like to see more of — dense transit-oriented development — will provide an incentive to build more TOD, and to stop building the isolated exurban residential subdivisions that generate more automobile trips. One of the great things about SB 375 is that it does exactly that.

Cities and counties, when pursuing developments that comply with the SCS that has been prepared for their region, should focus on constructing “transit priority projects” (TPPs) that are sufficiently dense and close to transit. TPPs must meet several criteria, including: (1) at least half the square footage must be residential use; (2) floor area ratio (FAR) no less than 0.75; (3) at least 20 units per acre; and (4) within a half-mile of a major transit stop or a high quality transit corridor, which can include a bus line with peak headways of no more than 15 minutes. In other words, what we think of as solid transit-oriented development would likely qualify as a TPP. So what is the point of laying out this definition? The point is that SB 375 would implement the following change: if a TPP is consistent with a region’s SCS, and if it satisfies other necessary conditions (such as no interference with wetlands or the habitat of an endangered species), then a TPP may be approved with less rigorous environmental review.

In particular, two major types of impacts need not be reviewed: growth-inducing impacts, and greenhouse gas emissions from new automobile trips that the project will generate. It may seem ironic that a bill whose entire point is to help implement emissions reduction would authorize less rigorous environmental review of any greenhouse gas emissions at all. These impacts could be taken into account generally in the SCS, which provides a blueprint for where to focus housing growth so as to encourage transit use and and reduce emissions. But the point is to incentivize the right type of growth, by streamlining environmental review for development projects that are TPPs and are consistent with the SCS (i.e. is reasonably dense and near good transit). Low-density residential subdivisions built on farmland, which would likely be accessible only by car and would thus increase emissions, would not enjoy these exemptions. The exact requirements are more technical than what I have described here. But hopefully this summary fleshes out SB 375 in a more meaningful way, without jumping too much into the minutiae of CEQA.

Check back soon for another post on this topic. Until then, readers are encouraged to contact the Governor to encourage him to sign SB 375 into law once a state budget is finally approved. Also, my apologies for the mess of acronyms in this post. You can blame your senator for that!

If you read the two previous posts about this past election, you probably noticed one rather glaring omission from the discussion: the two San Francisco measures that were actually about city planning, Propositions F and G concerning the massive redevelopment of the Hunters Point Shipyard and Candlestick Point. Unfortunately, after writing those other two election posts, there was no time to write a post about Hunters Point as well. But one thing is pretty certain: there will be opportunity in the future to discuss the landmark redevelopment of this area of the City. As you have likely already heard, 62% of San Franciscans voted “No” on the 50% affordable housing mandate in Prop F, while an almost equal number of San Franciscans voted “Yes” on Prop G, signalizing a desire to move forward with the cleaning up and redevelopment of this Superfund site. (Link to SF Election Results, scroll down to the bottom for city measures.)

Very little of the content of either Prop F or Prop G should have appeared on the ballot at all, particularly because this redevelopment project is so massive, complex, and still quite early in the process despite the fact that discussions have been ongoing for the past several years. The highly politicized Prop F vs. Prop G battle essentially became yet another example of San Francisco political theater at its finest: Daly v. Newsom, Progressives vs. “Progressives,” and any other iteration you can think of. As has been repeatedly raised by Prop F supporters, Prop G, as it pertains to the plan of the developer Lennar Corp., is not legally binding — it is filled with words like “encourage” and “should,” rather than “shall.” But then again, it could not be legally binding. The potential environmental impacts of cleaning up and redeveloping this area must be documented, and changes to the current plan will have to be made in response to the findings of the EIR when that document has been prepared. In addition, the plan is centered on the construction of a new 49ers stadium, but it is anything but a certainty that the team will remain in San Francisco. (The plan is not dependent on the stadium, and can be redrawn without it; the plan merely encourages retention of the 49ers “as a source of civic pride.”) The only binding part of Prop G — and really, the only part that should have appeared on the ballot at all — was the statements repealing Propositions D and F in 1997, in which voters approved the bonds and zoning that would have facilitated the construction of a new stadium and shopping center. Last month, Lennar did agree to a deal to increase affordability from an encouraged 25% affordable to a legally binding one-third affordable if Prop G were to pass, putting the Shipyard roughly in line with 55 Laguna and the Transbay redevelopment area in terms of affordable housing levels. The Chron reported about the deal, but at the time that article was published, Lennar and the San Francisco Labor Council had not formally agreed to the deal, and I think that was the last we heard of this in the mainstream media.

The inclusion of vague details about the plan, combined with local distrust of Lennar (not only in response to the asbestos scandal from last year and Lennar’s own in-house troubles, but also the “false promise” of rental housing on Parcel A) spurred Prop F’s momentum. As for the plan itself: it does bring much-needed homes, jobs and open space to an economically depressed neighborhood and an environmentally hazardous site, but given that this is one of the last major plots of land in San Francisco that remains unaccounted for, we can do even better. A strong argument can be made for higher levels of affordability on City land, although the exact amount to include is a determination best honed through hearings at the Board of Supervisors, rather than mandated by a ballot box initiative, where feel-good emotions and politically charged rhetoric tend to sweep aside logic and serious analysis. A lightly-used stadium is a poor use of scarce urban space — the parking is also a poor use, even with turf — and the land that has been set aside for the stadium and its associated parking would be better utilized if it housed a still greater density of residents and jobs, provided that the right transit infrastructure is put in place to accommodate the extra people. A spur/loop off the T-Third light rail line could connect the site to downtown, the Bayview commercial core along Third Street, the growing job center at Mission Bay, and the future Caltrain/Muni Metro joint hub at Bayshore Station. The current plan is rather geared towards automobiles, improving circulation access for vehicles, but it has a less firm grasp of how transit should link the redevelopment area to nearby districts to ensure that we do not simply add thousands of housing units inhabited by drivers who pile onto Highway 101. The layout of the neighborhood and its transportation flow should be designed so that transit is the natural and most attractive mode of travel, despite the somewhat isolated location, and despite the presence of a freeway near to at least the southern Candlestick portion of the redevelopment area. This was a guiding principle of the Market-Octavia Plan, and it is a principle that should guide any large-scale rezoning or redevelopment plan. The tools that can be used to plan a dense, truly livable and transit-oriented neighborhood at Hunters Point are well-established, and while lip service has been given to these concepts, the commitment to build in this way is not quite there. It remains now to coax the plan into fulfilling this vision.

St. Anthony Foundation has been an institution in the Tenderloin for decades, providing shelter, daily meals, clothes, as well as medical and social services to San Francisco’s homeless since 1950. St. Anthony (headquartered on the southern side of Golden Gate Avenue, at Jones) will move many of its services into a new five-story building across the street (at 150 Golden Gate) that is set to be completed next month. The second phase of St. Anthony’s renewal aims to completely replace the current structure at 121 Golden Gate. The plan for the redone 121 Golden Gate originally included a new dining facility and just 17 permanent units of senior housing, along with 17 medical discharge units. But the latest proposal for 121 Golden Gate, to be carried out in conjunction with Mercy Housing, is a $66 million project that could include not only a more spacious dining facility, but is also planned to feature 90 studio and one-bedroom units in a 10-story building, with no parking. The building would rise to the full ten stories on the corner, stepping down to eight stories on the side to match the height of Boyd Hotel next door. The latest incarnation of 121 Golden Gate could join 990 Polk and 55 Laguna as another major project featuring construction of new housing units for seniors, and the project could be delivered as soon as 2011.

While on the subject of Market & Octavia, an additional topic we cannot neglect is the 55 Laguna redevelopment of the UC Extension site (pictured in the above two images), which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In December 2003, the UC Berkeley extension relocated off the 55 Laguna site, which lies near the geographic heart of the Market & Octavia Plan area. The AF Evans 55 Laguna development has been the subject of separate but concurrent discussions at City Hall.

A controversial issue was the need to rezone the site from public to a designation appropriate for a mixed use neighborhood. The project was protested and appealed on several bases — including compliance with CEQA, the National Historic Preservation Act, and NEPA on the basis of potential HUD funds for the affordable housing component — expressing concern that the demolition would constitute a substantial adverse change that would cause the site to lose historical preservation tax credit and to be de-listed as historically significant resource. But while the appellants disapproved of the project’s current incarnation, their contentions did not unearth any true inadequacies in the EIR, and so the requisite zoning amendments eventually passed through committee and onto the full Board, where they were first passed last week — creating a special use district bounded by Laguna, Haight, Buchanan, and Hermann Streets to facilitate the 55 Laguna project. This replaces the site’s public zoning, but merely zoning a parcel as public is no guarantee that the land will actually enjoy vibrant public use, as this site clearly demonstrates. The UC Extension’s blank walls have had a deadening effect on the surrounding neighborhood, giving the institution the feel of a fortress.

Fortress or no fortress, total demolition of this historic resource would be a highly significant loss; but the project plan is a far cry from total demolition. Although the plan calls for the demolition of Richardson Hall Annex and Middle Hall Gymnasium (the oldest building on campus), 83% of the historically significant square footage — located in Richardson Hall, Woods Hall, and Woods Hall Annex — will be retained and reused in the complex, which will also include seven newly constructed buildings. Unique features like the WPA-era Reuben Kadish mural, which was added in 1936, will also be incorporated into the new plan site. Meanwhile, the deadening retaining wall would be opened up to provide a retail frontage onto the street. Perhaps best of all, surface parking and chain link fences will be replaced with public amenities and a major housing component that received a booster shot of affordability from Mirkarimi: over 400 new rental units, of which 36-37% are affordable at 50% of AMI, including the Openhouse project, an eight-story building with close to 90 affordable units welcoming to LGBTQ seniors. In terms of public amenities, there will be about 5,000 square feet of commercial space, a 12,000 square foot community center in Woods Annex, and 35,000 square feet of public open space that includes a garden and a park bridging the two halves of Waller Street. Although Mirkarimi has expressed a desire for it to relocate in the near future, the UCSF Dental Clinic and its associated parking will also remain on the site.

On balance, the 55 Laguna project — which will inject higher density, active street uses, and publicly accessible amenities within immediate reach of Market Street transit — harmonizes well with the spirit underlying the Market & Octavia Plan.

Renderings courtesy AF Evans.

For several years, the City of San Francisco has worked to develop the Market & Octavia Neighborhood Plan, studying neighborhoods centered on the pivotal intersection of Market and Octavia, bookended by Church Street on the west and Van Ness Avenue on the east. The plan was one part of the Better Neighborhoods 2002 effort — a sadly ironic name, because a mere 365 days is nowhere near sufficient to start and finish such a large-scale planning process, particularly in San Francisco. In some areas covered by the Market-Octavia plan, one has the impression of being in an unclassifiable neighborhood that is nonetheless quite close to favorite, well-established locales. The plan encompasses an area historically known as “the Hub”, so named for the Muni turnaround located there, and the neighborhoods contained within the plan area continue to evolve and come into their own, coining names like Deco Ghetto to reflect both an emerging identity and broader acknowledgment of that identity. Other parts of the plan area, including Hayes Valley, already enjoy established commercial districts but have been given a new chance to blossom since the retreat of the Central Freeway to the south side of Market Street.

It is also in this area that the slanted South of Market street grid curves and reorients into an arrangement that reflects the cardinal directions, adjusting to form the Mission/Castro grid. This is a departure from the pattern firmly established all the way from the Ferry Building, resulting in a suspension of the security resting in the predictable pattern of downtown streets. But some clever planning could take advantage of this insecurity and transform it into a distinctly urban sort of excitement, in which even the unsuspecting pedestrian would be smoothly guided by intuitively navigable streets designed for humans, rather than for the sole function of moving automobiles efficiently.

Market-Octavia is exactly the plan that aims to knit these disconnected neighborhoods together into a more unified and walkable set of districts that San Francisco could rightly be proud to call its own. The plan reflects thoughtful cooperation between community members and city planners. This vision was not forcefully hoisted upon neighborhood residents; rather, the goal was to achieve a consensus. It simultaneously blends a respect for the eminently livable residential scale of San Francisco’s most beloved neighborhoods, while advocating for a forward-thinking vision of elegant density graced by moving examples of contemporary design, like the Octavia Gateway pictured above — a building that provides a splendid answer to the problem posed by the narrow, awkward parcel of land on which it would sit, at the northeast corner of Market and Octavia.

As indicated in the above map, the plan appropriately focuses higher residential density on the neighborhood’s primary thoroughfare and transit corridor, calling for a streetwall 80-85 feet tall, with infill opportunities along and immediately off of Market Street itself — and milder heights of 30-45 feet deeper in the neighborhood. The plan concentrates the very highest densities in a Special Use District (SUD) centered at the intersection of Van Ness and Market, in which slender towers (up to 400 feet tall) placed directly on top of the Muni Metro Van Ness station would step down to about 120 feet within a couple blocks of the intersection. Such a plan could immeasurably improve the highly disappointing intersection of Van Ness and Market. By all rights, this intersection should be an energetic centerpiece of the city landscape — but it has little in the way of pedestrian amenities, and its low-rise frontages are a huge letdown:

Not only that, but it is scarred by that cardinal urban sin: underutilized space in the form of surface parking:

Hardly impressive for the meeting of two of the City’s greatest boulevards. Landmark towers alone would not transform this intersection into a real place, but they could be an important part of the formula. Streetscape improvements carried out as part of the Van Ness bus rapid transit project, including perhaps especially carefully designed stations at Market and Mission, are yet another component. The Market-Octavia plan also paves the way for the creation of a dense, mixed-use “SoMa West” neighborhood and new open space, centered on the area in which Mission Street splits into the one-way pair of Mission and Otis. To account for the increases in density and some 6000 additional housing units, the plan area is designed not only to discourage private auto use, but correspondingly to aid smoother passage of surface transit and to create a streetscape more attractive and friendly to both pedestrians and cyclists. The northeast end of the neighborhood would connect to the proposed bus rapid transit corridor along Van Ness Avenue, itself a corridor with some two thousand units of infill housing under construction and in the pipeline.

Years after the planning process was initiated, the version of the plan adopted last year continues to be subjected to further amendment that actually brings it closer to the admirable intent of the 2002 draft plan. Three contentious issues have dominated recent discussion at the Board of Supervisors: affordable housing, parking limits, and density caps — in particular, how those issues would interact with sub-districts contained within the plan area. In addition to the Market/Van Ness SUD, areas such Market Street west of Franklin are designated as Neighborhood Commercial Transit (NCT) to encourage active retail uses on the ground floor, an uninterrupted streetwall along Market, and any parking to be accessed from the rear. The last category, Residential Transit-Oriented (RTO), covers the more low-rise residential blocks tucked further in behind Market, including parts of Duboce Triangle and the Lower Haight.

First, the affordable housing fees. Supervisors Mirkarimi and McGoldrick had earlier agreed to implement an across the board $10/square foot impact fee on developers to be applied to affordable housing, which McGoldrick continues to support. Mirkarimi later suggested a tiered system to avoid punishing small developers who would be hit harder by a $10/square foot fee. Under this tiered proposal, developers would pay $8/square foot for projects located in the Market/Van Ness SUD, $4/square foot for NCT projects, and no fee for projects in the RTO area. In addition, Mirkarimi’s proposal suggests that in lieu of purchasing TDRs to exceed maximum allowable FAR in the Market/Van Ness Special Use District, developers could contribute $30/square foot to the city affordable housing fund. These fees would be imposed in addition to other fees raised for impacts related to parking and transit.

The second source of dispute is the parking. Planning had relaxed the limits originally proposed in 2002, which elicited protest from neighborhood residents (notably the Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association) who were quite justifiably upset at the prospect of encouraging more auto use and degrading the livability of their streets. McGoldrick’s amendment on parking was geared to be attractive to families, pushing for one-to-one parking for family-designated housing (at a minimum of two bedrooms and 1000 square feet). Mirkarimi’s version, on the other hand, is comparable to the original recommendations from the 2002 draft plan; indeed, even slightly stricter, with a 0.25 parking ratio in the Market/Van Ness SUD and 0.5 for areas designated NCT and RTO (with up to 0.75 in the RTO under conditional use). There is now general agreement to adopt these stricter limits.

The third and last major source of dispute is the RTO density soft cap, which would require conditional use for projects building more than one unit for a 600 square foot area. Duboce Triangle neighbors pushed this cap for just their own corner of the plan area, and Mirkarimi’s proposal maintains the cap for Duboce Triangle but removes the cap for RTO blocks outside of Duboce Triangle. McGoldrick’s proposal, in accordance with the Planning Commission’s recommendation, would apply this cap for all units in the RTO zone (exempting permanently affordable units), to prevent unit subdivision from encroaching on the supply of family-sized housing.

Opponents would point to the removed density cap in Mirkarimi’s amendment as evidence that the Market-Octavia plan flies in the face of the historic architectural context that defines the neighborhood and introduces unsuitable and unmitigated levels of density, but practically, the density we would see built is limited not only by the plan-specified heights but also by emphasis on the creation of housing intended for families: a minimum of two bedrooms and 1000 square feet. Moreover, the assertion that the proposed heights would overwhelm the neighborhood and dwarf existing structures is absurd. Several older apartment buildings already exemplify what the maximum allowed height would be in the plan area, excluding the Market/Van Ness SUD, which is the plan’s sole provision for high-rise density. And in some cases, existing buildings already exceed the heights specified in the plan. Consider the following examples. What do you think: are these overwhelming? Do they tower offensively over the neighborhood?

Opponents also present Market-Octavia as though it is a drastic change that will irreparably scar the landscape; but in a very real sense, the plan simply formalizes what we have done all along when building city neighborhoods — or, more precisely, what we once did. Perhaps the major difference is that although our neighborhoods were first built in the era of the streetcar, we find ourselves now in the age of the private car. Modern reliance on the automobile handicaps our ability to manage density without simultaneously chipping away at that reliance — both negatively by limiting parking, and affirmatively by designing a streetscape that encourages walking. Market-Octavia is not about razing blocks of Victorians to the ground and erecting skyscrapers in their stead. With the exception of the Market/Van Ness SUD — just one small corner of the plan area — the plan is strictly low- to mid-rise, but more importantly, it provides a set of guidelines to govern infill opportunities, so that any infill developments are consistent with a general desire to promote livability by emphasizing the neighborhood’s transit orientation. Market-Octavia is not about creating a new neighborhood, but rather, about enhancing and providing cohesion to a collection of neighborhoods that in many ways are already quite successful, but that could be even better.

In some sense, it boils down to the following question: do we want to preserve this?

Or would we rather have more buildings like this?

Yes, the plan area is full of lovely, modestly-sized Victorians, but they are largely located in RTO blocks with the milder 35-40 foot height limit. Heights in those blocks were so specified in order to respect and preserve this comfortable, characteristically San Franciscan residential streetscape. And even if a three-story Victorian and an eight-story apartment building are juxtaposed (as occurs in one of the above images), is that really so bad? Is it not precisely this sort of architectural variety that adds a distinctly urban interest to the street environment? Did I miss an executive decision requiring that every building on a given block be of identical height and architectural style, and that every block in a given neighborhood look identical? Encouraging taller buildings to front onto Market Street and to be built to the property line will help to emphasize the angularity of Market Street intersections and heighten visual excitement on what, after all, is (or should be) San Francisco’s most impressive thoroughfare.

The Market-Octavia Plan is the product of extensive community involvement spanning the better part of a decade. That community input has been undeniably invaluable in terms of taking a great initial idea and developing the details. And yet, no plan, however sound, can ever be perfect to all people; drag our feet too long, and we risk losing sight of what makes the underlying spirit of the plan so special in the first place. And all the while, fences and remaining empty lots along Octavia are wounds in the urban fabric — to be sure, no longer shrouded in the darkness of a freeway, but nonetheless still not fully healed. So much unrealized potential: yet once the dust settles after almost a decade of discussions, neighborhood meetings, environmental review, negotiations, and squabbles, we may at last enjoy watching this keystone district in the heart of the City transform into a vibrant hub of neighborhoods.

Full size images are hosted on my Flickr account.

And bound to get more controversial, courtesy of the C.W. Nevius column that appeared in the Chronicle this week. The column painted a grim picture of The Plaza, a housing-first building at Sixth and Howard Streets. While it included a fairly meek rebuttal from DPH, the article mostly cited anecdotes which indicated that rather than providing proactive services to adequately encourage its formerly homeless residents to conquer the substance abuse underlying their unfortunate life cycle, the supportive housing experiment has only succeeded in moving the harsh realities of the street indoors — putting aside for the moment any architectural achievements of The Plaza.

Pursuant to both the project redevelopment plan requiring 35% affordability and the Mayor’s Consolidated Plan, a permanently affordable supportive housing project with on-site services in the vein of The Plaza is slated to be built on the northern portion of Transbay’s Block 11, fronting onto Folsom; construction is targeted to start in roughly 2011. The building, which would likely be about 80-85 feet tall, will include 100-120 units, 90% of which would be 400 square foot studios, and 525 square foot one-bedroom apartments for the remaining 10%. In accordance with the plan to transform Folsom into a new two-way neighborhood main street for Transbay and Rincon Hill, neighborhood-serving retail is planned for the ground floor of the building at the corner of Folsom. The RFP for Block 11′s supportive housing component will be finalized in upcoming weeks. Proposals submitted in response to the RFP will be collected during the summer and evaluated by the Commission later this fall.

As for the rest of Block 11, fronting Essex Street: the slice of land adjacent to the supportive housing site would support no more than a couple dozen homes, of the 35-50 foot townhouse variety that will be peppered throughout the Transbay redevelopment zone to lend a comfortably human scale to the alleys and narrower streets in the neighborhood; it has not yet been officially determined whether or not these units will be applied to fulfill the affordable housing requirement. Moving a little further south along Essex, the remaining slivers of land will become new open space for the neighborhood. The tax increment funds needed to make this open space a reality are available to be applied, pending approval from the Board of Supervisors. The park would ideally be completed in advance of the new housing.