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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 by the Supervisors representing Districts 1, 3, 9, and 11. The Mayor may address the Board initially for up to five minutes. Discussion shall not exceed five minutes per Supervisor.
1. As part of our state's efforts to curb greenhouse gases by 15% by 2040, California, under SB 375, requires that the San Francisco Bay Area, create land-use and transportation based "Sustainable Communities Strategies" to meet this goal. The Association of Bay Area Governments and MTC are developing a plan called Plan Bay Area to comply with this mandate.
The Plan requires that most of the additional 2.1 million people projected to live in the Bay Area by 2040 be housed near transit and jobs to discourage the use of cars as their primary means of commuting. San Francisco would build 92,400 more housing units for 280,000 more people and 190,000 more jobs, most in the high tech sector.
SB 375 also calls for streamlining the CEQA process for “Transit Priority Projects.” Potentially, the entire city of San Francisco would be eligible for CEQA exemption. This proposed reduction in scrutiny of development projects could further exacerbate those displacement impacts to existing communities.
Upwards of 33% of people living in communities of concern in San Francisco, areas with high numbers of renters, low income households, and non-English-speakers, could be displaced. Over 40 local and regional environmental and community advocacy groups oppose the current draft Plan.
A consensus has formed around the following recommendations for making Plan Bay Area better:
- Provide $3 billion in additional operating revenue for local transit service and commit to a long-range “Regional Transit Operating Program” to boost transit operating subsidies by another $9 billion over the coming years,
- Move 5 percent of the housing growth from low-income communities (mainly in San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose) to transit-connected suburban job centers.
- Incorporate strong anti-displacement policies for community stabilization measures, such as land banking and preservation of affordable housing in at-risk neighborhoods.
- Direct the Planning Department to analyze the impacts of potential CEQA streamlining as soon as possible and create strong mitigation measures.
Do you support these measures, and are you committed to a plan with lower displacement levels than the current proposal? If you do not support these ideas, why not? (Supervisor Mar, District 1)
2. Mr. Mayor, last year, the Board of Supervisors made small but important changes to your proposed budget that represented our shared citywide priorities. In recent months, Controller data indicates that positions allocated by the Board for librarians, recreation and park staff, building inspection, health and labor enforcement, urban agriculture and other Board priorities were either not filled or only recently hired. Will you commit to ensuring that when the FY13-14 budget is approved, our Board of Supervisors’ priorities are treated equally to your Administration’s, with positions filled as soon as possible? What can we do to work together to improve our hiring process once positions are created? (Supervisor Chiu, District 3)
3. At my request, the Budget and Legislative Analyst recently released a performance audit of the San Francisco Housing Authority that details an agency in crisis. I know you have been conducting a Housing Authority working group for many months to address this crisis. Given the local management problems at the Housing Authority and the fact that the Federal government has, for years, been turning its back on the nation's poorest residents by defunding housing authorities across the nation, what is your long term vision to save public housing--a significant public asset to San Francisco? (Supervisor Campos, District 9)
4. The housing search engine, Rent Jungle, estimates that as of May 2013, the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco is $2547, and the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment is $3206. Using the accepted standard that you should not spend more than 30% of your income on housing, this means a household salary of $128,000 is needed to rent the average two-bedroom.
Working people and even most professionals cannot afford the current rents, and those who are in rent-controlled housing are feeling very vulnerable to displacement with the increased pressure on their landlords to find some way to evict them and triple their rents.
Are you concerned that your administration’s policies to stimulate economic activity, especially supporting the tech industry, have created one-sided development and only jobs for high-income “appsters,” and have exacerbated the already extremely limited housing market? Do you have any plans to address the increasing rents, and increasing rate of evictions and displacement of long-time San Francisco renters? (Supervisor Avalos, District 11)
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