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Place
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City and County of San Francisco
Legislation Details
File #:
Version:
1
120118
Name:
Formal Policy Discussions - February 14, 2012
Status:
Type:
Hearing
Filed
File created:
In control:
2/8/2012
Board of Supervisors
On agenda:
Final action:
2/14/2012
2/14/2012
Enactment date:
Enactment #:
Title:
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)
Sponsors:
Attachments:
1. Board_Packet_021412
Action By
Date
Action
Result
Ver.
ASSIGNED
President
2/8/2012
1
HEARD AND FILED
Board of Supervisors
2/14/2012
1