Stop SB 50 now

I agree Tim. There is something we can do. Take note on how our local politicians vote on this and report on it. Let the voters know who supported AB50 and let them know come election time what you feel about their vote.

My family has been torn apart by the lack of home building, not the surfeit of it. My brother and sister and half my friends can’t afford it here anymore.

In the 1980’s we built three times as much housing in San Mateo County and it was vastly more affordable. Why did this vastly bigger “developer giveaway” result in lower prices and lower rents?

Why is it that when San Francisco built record amounts of housing between 2015 and 2018, rents and evictions both declined? Surely this “developer giveaway” should have increased both of those?

I’m tired of homeowners who bought homes when cities were building lots of them and they were cheaper turning around and trying to deny the same to the next generation.

So upsetting! "Sen. Wiener also thinks that increasing high density near transportation will get people out of their cars and onto public transit" What people??? A family of 2, 3, 4...that has to drop off kids at school, go to work, then come back and take them to doctor's appointments, speech therapy, soccer practice, or run and get groceries for 4 people? Give me a break. First, the apartments that are being built are catered to single, young, tech that can afford these luxury apartments...and some can't still. Govt needs to start worrying about the families that live on the Peninsula that are moving out because all this "housing" that you are approving are mostly ONE BEDROOMS! They do nothing for families struggling! They help only one demographic. Every article about a new proposal talks about over 50 or 60% are one bedrooms...catering to single people. AND, no one can PURCHASE any of this so called "housing". Where are the town-homes, the condos?? Housing that people can purchase?? I know a handful of people with 2 kids, living in 1 bedrooms. It's absolutely embarrassing that the City (Cities) are approving these buildings going up with mostly 1 bedroom apartments. It's all about the money. Contractors, investors, want as much money as they can...2 bedrooms, even 3 bedrooms don't bring in enough. The City shouldn't even approve anything unless the building is 100% 2 bedrooms, or if the building has condos for purchase.

30 years ago, you would come to the Peninsula to raise your family away from the hustle of the City. Now, families have no where to live, the kids have no where to go and play, and a Senator thinks I'm going to get out of my car, put my kids on my back, and run around town from work to soccer and baseball practice. Absolutely unbelievable. Start worrying about your families before they are all gone!

Follow the money....it's a giveaway to the Wiener's campaign supporters who are from the real estate industry — landlords, developers, real estate attorneys, property management firms, brokers, architects, among others ...Here's a list of the 700 contributions Wiener got from the real estate industry in 2016.

http://www.housinghumanright.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Scott-Wiener-2016-State-Senate-Real-Estate-Campaign-Contributions-Source_-California-Secretary-of-State-Sheet1.pdf

And to the Yimby's, how has the 10 years of "trickle down" stack and pack, one bedroom “luxury” housing been working out price-wise on the Peninsula or anywhere in the Bay Area?

The focus for SB50 is on building market-rate apartments. That doesn’t cut it for low-income Californians and fails to protect renters from gentrification....

And if it does pass ...just watch the global investors show up.

Kevin, in those glorious 1980's you idolize, my PhD Chemist husband and my MBA income together could not afford to buy here, despite growing up in Los Altos. So we moved to Minnesota, bought a 2-bedroom starter, built 5 years equity, then came to Belmont to put every penny into a run-down townhome with gold shag carpet, foil wallpaper and a leaky roof. After 12 years sweat equity, eating beans and driving broken down used cars - we eeked into a house with orange shag, foil wallpaper and a leaky roof. Two highly educated well paid professionals who you now call NIMBY and entitled.
We saw what we needed to do, made plan and we worked for it. It was not given to us. You're free to plan for your future - but stop whining that I should provide one for you.

Tim, thank you for laying out your argument so well. As we all are aware now, Scott Wiener has called "single family homes immoral". Cities such as Burlingame now have over 1200 units in the pipeline being built or approved to be built in areas where there is appropriate infrastructure to handle density. City planning serves a noble purpose of creating cities where people can live and raise families without the downside of living in a City such as San Francisco whose politicians have allowed it to become a place where families are not welcome. Long live the suburbs!

If Silicon Valley wants more housing, they should build it on their own campus or buy out apartments nearby.
I don't want to be taxed to pay for more housing to satisfy Silicon Valley or developers or real estate agents.

It is ironic to hear so many people blaming the developers for trying to make money off of SB50 and supporting Sen. Weiner's campaign. Meanwhile, these same people have gotten rich through home value appreciation and don't want additional housing supply to jeopardize their windfall. Stop being so sanctimonious. Be happy that you have Prop 13, another gift to the landed aristocracy, and let others have a shot at a home in the Bay Area.

Isn't Kevin so tired of those of us who happened to buy our homes years ago on a shoe string and somehow managed to keep our homes kept up in neighborhoods? Is it my fault that this area developed into a prime real estate market? It wasn't always that way. We bought our house in 1979 because it was in a desirable and reasonably priced neighborhood for us. Many of my professional colleagues opted for Novato and Concord. I am now being castigated for making a choice that we made more than 40 years ago? Meanwhile I was laid off twice and scrambled to make the mortgage payments. Somehow, our children have managed to stay in the area because they pursued an education that paid off. Are we to lament and feel sorry for those children who did not grasp opportunities when they had a chance? Kevin is a Bernie Sanders-like advocate, blame his misfortune on others without taking responsibility for his own actions or lack thereof.

San Mateo NIMBYs have blocked affordable housing for decades despite creating massive numbers of jobs and expected SF to house the workers, and a new analysis shows that their status quo of saying "NO" will fail to meet their minimum affordable housing California RHNA allocation for the next 40 years for very low income, and will take them 50 years to meet minimum low income affordable housing needs at their current rate. San Mateo produces so little new housing they will not ever meet even minimal supply for average income housing until 2038 because they produced so little for the past 5+ years. This NIMBY obstructionism must stop!

We should not let the limousine liberal fake progressive's fake "perfect" be the enemy of the SB 50 "good", b/c the NIMBY city counsel’s/supervisor’s status quo is a big part the evil being done upon the CA people.

Sen. Maguire of NIMBY central Marin County said it right that everyone must do their fair share and every ‘hood should see at least a little change, and that NIMBY strategy of just saying “No” is no longer acceptable in our humanitarian housing crisis. Only the poster-child NIMBY would think it intolerable that bigger cities should be much more dense, urban living, not mostly NIMBY down-zoned suburb living as it is now.

Over the past 40 years NIMBY’s immorally hijacked our big cities.
There is nothing progressive, pro-tenant, or pro-affordability about exclusionary zoning that says if you can't afford a whole building to yourself on a large lot inside a big urban city, you have to stay out of the neighborhood and effective stay out of the city, or or end up living on its streets, like what even happens to a high percentage of our college student that NIMBYs have disdain for by consistently blocking boarding housing and apartments in single family zoned 'hoods (i.e., they are banned in 50-70% of the city area, which is immorally reserved only for the NIMBYs).

The simple NIMBY truth is that they do not want any apartment (not even small or mid-sized 4-5 floor ones) next to them and they believe they have a GOD given right to zone 70% of urban cities to only allow single family homes, including along public mass transit corridors. Everything else they cite are just straw-man excuses and dissinformation hiding their only real issue: to block apartments being built next to them, trying to avoid automatically losing public support if the bad optics of their immoral position were explicitly stated as their primary issue and goal.

Obviously, no single bill can solve the affordable housing crisis. It took over 40 years of NIMBY down-zoning and gentrification to put us into this housing abyss. Yet, obviously, smart upzoning with a significant affordable housing percentage requirement and tenant protections is certain part of the solution, to counteract at least a little of the unbelievable amount of NIMBY down-zoning done.

So, no big surprise that the main opposition are NIMBY homeowner associations, city council/supervisors elected by the NIMBY homeowners, NIMBY special interest groups like the fake nonprofit AIDS Healthcare Foundation, and all their various proxies.

NIMBYs like to cite how Weiner historically got big donation from developers, trying to imply that rich corporate executives and developers wrote SB 50 in their favor, which is a standard NIMBY scare tactic, to protect the high land/rent prices of the filthy rich NIMBY home owners who immorally ban apartments and renters from their backyards. While benefiting his developer donors arguably might have been what he was trying in his killed SB 827, that is certainly no longer true in the twice amended SB 50, which is now been amended to address all opposition issues, except, of course, the obstructionist NIMBYs who profit off of and caused this housing crisis. The current SB 50 is not clearly in anyone’s favor, except it was recently amended to let small city NIMBYs off the hook to get broader support.

That is, do we really believe that RE developers want 15-25% inclusionary affordability requirements, demolition protections, banning development if building has had any renter for past 7 years, excluding poor communities, etc., etc., all of which SB 50 requires/provides. I mean, SB 50 even protect the future potential of existing rental stock being removed by stating it cannot used if there were any rentals on the property for 10 years prior to the proposed project.
It is ludicrous to think this was not a carefully negotiated approach by all equity, business, and developer stakeholders, except of course, the filthy land rich single family NIMBY home owners that caused this horrible housing/homelessness humanitarian disaster in LA and SF Bay Area.

SB 50, unlike the killed SB 827, was a product of extensive negotiations by all parties at the table. Just like the CASA compact, which rich old NIMBY single family homeowners (who created the CA housing/homelessness crisis) also are rabid against, but the young and renters (who are getting crushed and spit out of CA) strongly support it.
64% of LA voters supported measure jjj transit oriented communities, which is pretty much like SB 50. So, obviously, the will of the people is to upzone around transit. So, why do NIMBYs pretend that anyone but NIMBY homeowners are dead set against SB 50 thinking it is bad for LA??? Moreover, to show how inept cities are at producing housing, even w/ JJJ, LA cannot get those project build b/c they need a state-level law, like SB 50, to empower the city to implement JJJ over competing State level land uses. LA actually wants and needs SB 50! But for the very vocal minority of NIMBYs, LA and SF Bay Area (and rest of CA) would be making much more affordable housing production progress.

Tim does an excellent job laying out the pitfalls of this well intended but misguided attempt to solve our housing crisis. Unless action is take to stop to incessant and excessive expansion of commercial office space in the bay area then housing prices will never become affordable, SB 50 or not.

Kevin says, "Why should the people who actually want to live in a dense area be forced to move" My question is why should I be forced to move? I like where I've lived for the past 30 years and guys like you think it's ok for my quality of life to be ruined? NO you suck it up or you move, bottom line. You don't try to spin this I have done nothing but worked an honest day raised my kids right. Then some kid wants to tell me if I don't like it move? Who are you to be telling long time residents "I'm all for wrecking your life and if you don't like it move". I don't get it.

Trickle-down housing won’t solve our affordability crisis

SB50 is not an affordable housing strategy. We have disproportionately built housing unaffordable to most San Franciscans, a practice that not only fails to address the demand for truly affordable housing, but also raises median housing prices and rents as luxury development gentrifies our city.

The Planning Department’s latest pipeline report shows that 94 percent of the city’s projected market-rate-housing needs through the year 2022 have already been built, while barely 30 percent of all affordable housing needs for low- and middle-income households have been produced. Nearly 45,000 additional housing units already approved for construction have not been built.

Simply upzoning and loosening density restrictions won’t get them built, and allowing more luxury condos won’t make them affordable to most San Franciscans.

…... SB50 guarantees zero increased affordable housing and drives up land costs, making 100 percent affordable housing development more difficult. It’s a giveaway to private developers without asking for anything in return. While some affordable units would be built in larger development projects, this is thanks to our local inclusionary requirements, not SB50, and not nearly enough to offset how market-rate development would drive up prices.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/Open-Forum-Trickle-down-housing-won-t-solve-13727879.php

Great discussion everyone! Don't forget to attend the STOP SB 50 Town Hall meeting on Wednesday, May 22nd. at 6:30 PM upstairs at the San Carlos Library. It is located at 610 Elm St, San Carlos, CA 94070. There will be a presentation and break off groups to work on advocating against SB 50. Please spread the word!

Just learned. SB 50 died today. Three cheers!!!!!

Ding dong, the witch is dead! Well, SB50 is shelved til 2020, anyway Stay vigilant, Bay Area, in hopes that the next version includes local control, actually has infrastructure in the discussion, and provides for real affordable housing and not continued gentrification. https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Major-California-housing-bill-from-Sen-Scott-13851194.php?t=a4f6804794

The STOP SB 50 Meeting at the San Carlos Library, second floor, on Wednesday, May 22nd. at 6:30 PM is still on.

Senator Wiener was quoted today saying: “While I’m deeply disappointed that the Chair of the Appropriations Committee has decided to postpone SB 50 until 2020, we are one hundred percent committed to moving the legislation forward,”

The attacks on local control and giveaways to big, international developers are not going away and we need to push back hard while there is momentum.

Please attend.

Kevin do you really think it’s un-American for city govt to regulate what goes on on the city. So zoning is unAmerican? How about getting permits when doing work on your house, or weather or not you can build a 10 foot fence in front of your house? Let me tell you a short story, 15 years ago I wanted to do an addition to my house the city stopped me because I had no additional off street parking added. Today guys like you think I should build an apartment building in my backyard and who cares about adding parking! Think about if everyone added 6 or 7 cars to every address wouldn’t that be a huge mess? There’s a reason they did what they did 15 years ago but a guy like Weiner seems to care less how we live as long as we can cram more people in, by your own words an already dense population. Weiner should go back to Jersey.

I question the premise that dissolution of the redevelopment agencies was a major cause of the current affordable housing crisis. I also question the characterization that high density housing in the form of townhomes or condos are necessarily "luxury", no matter how much granite is used for counters. To suggest companies should build housing is to fundamentally misunderstand the concept of community... Fight SB 50 with reasonable arguments not propaganda.

I'm so glad that SB 50 was defeated and not moving forward, it would've made the housing crisis more unstable and letting lobbyists and developers to build more housing projects without the approval from local communities. They're just using affordable housing as an excuse to build ugly high density projects without reviews and restrictions. State government should leave it to local residents with zoning.

I'm pleased that Kevin Mullin at the Peninsula Healthcare District Spier town hall made clear the problem with the above argument is that to bring back RDA the teacher author would end up stripping education funding. I thought that was an excellent nuance from Assembly Member Mullin.

SB330 is the next one we need to sideline. Read all about how YIMBYs manipulate us with 'house is on fire' emergencies, then call us selfish for wanting to think through the details. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/localism-still-has-a-heartbeat-even-in-california