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Pursuant to Charter Sections 2.103 and 3.100(7), and Administrative Code Section 2.11, the Mayor shall answer the following eligible questions submitted from Supervisors representing District's 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10. The Mayor may address the Board initially for up to five minutes. Discussion shall not exceed five minutes per Supervisor.
1. Tenancies-in-common (TICs) in San Francisco have traditionally been a vehicle to allow residents in our City to realize their goal of home ownership. San Francisco has always promoted a path towards converting TICs to condominiums, which has a number of benefits - principally the ability to obtain lower interest rates for their property. Over the past decade, however, the condo conversion lottery has created a bottleneck for TIC owners, and the chances of prevailing in the condo lottery have continued to diminish year after year. To compound matters, during the recent recession the vast majority of lenders who financed TICs stopped lending into the market, leaving only a handful of financing options - at the same time many TIC owners are now facing adjustable-rate mortgages that are resetting and threatening to place many TIC owners into foreclosure. Especially given these dynamics, compounded with our looming annual budget deficits and the dismantling of our redevelopment agency, the concept of condo lottery bypass legislation whereby condo owners would be offered a one-time opportunity to pay a fee to bypass the lottery, should be a win-win situation for everyone, especially given these fees would be specifically directed towards affordable housing in San Francisco. Would you support this condo lottery bypass legislation, which would serve the dual purpose of helping vulnerable TIC owners in San Francisco, and provide a significant source of funding for our affordable housing community to plug our current budget deficit? (Supervisor Farrell, District 2)
2. Having vibrant neighborhood commercial corridors in all parts of the City is important, they are where our residents shop, eat, get services, and build a community. The City can do more to assist these corridors, but it first takes walking these corridors to understand the challenges. Will you commit to investing some time in the neighborhood commercial corridors of the Outer Sunset and explore opportunities to enhance our community? (Supervisor Chu, District 4)
3. Small businesses are a core part of what makes San Francisco the city we all have come to love, the city that people want to visit and the city that people want to move to. They define our city and our neighborhoods; they create jobs and become places for our communities to gather. We are seeing more and more of these small businesses being forced out by the rising cost of rent. In the recent past we have lost businesses like the Eagle Tavern, The John Barleycorn, Original Joe's, The Front Room, The Red Vic Theater, Mission Records and Namu. What other neighborhood serving businesses are we going to lose next? How can the City protect our existing small businesses from rising rent cost while maintaining neighborhood character and protecting jobs? How can we help them stay competitive with larger stores? (Supervisor Kim, District 6)
4. Mr. Mayor: Thank you for your leadership on housing affordability in San Francisco. Your desire to create a housing trust fund provides us with enormous opportunity to move, in a collaborative way, toward creation of a sustainable funding source for housing our diverse population. One critical aspect of addressing our housing crisis is ensuring that people of moderate and middle income -- i.e., 80%-150% of area median income -- have access to housing. Less than 1/3 of San Franciscans are moderate or middle income. This is very low and reflects the hollowing out of our middle class. We need to reverse that trend. Moreover, less than 20% of our affordable housing spending goes to moderate and middle income affordable housing. The lack of moderate/middle income affordable housing undermines our economy, our budget, and the city generally. How can we ensure that the housing trust fund that comes out of the process you have convened will meaningfully address the need for moderate/middle income housing, as opposed to paying lip service to it? (Supervisor Wiener, District 8)
5. Recently, Municipal Transportation Agency proposed extending the San Francisco Park Program (SFPark) to the Mission Bay, Dogpatch, Potrero neighborhoods, and portions of the Mission. The SFPark program has many innovative ways of managing parking such as demand responsive pricing, longer or no time limits, and the ability to pay with a credit card. While these neighborhoods do need creative ways to address parking management, enforcement of existing parking restrictions has been inadequate and access to reliable public transportation is still limited. Additionally, after years of planning and support from the City, Production, Distribution and Repair (PDR) businesses who employ hundreds of San Franciscans have begun to thrive in these areas. I am concerned that the implementation and expansion of the SFPark program is not considering the unique transit and parking enforcement challenges of some of these neighborhoods and the unique nature of PDR businesses. What are your thoughts on how this program can be adapted and improved in order to better fit these areas and would you be supportive of evaluating the use of parking passes for employees? (Supervisor Cohen, District 10)
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