Temporary threat to parking in the Upper Haight - Meeting 11/30

Thanks to Metroblogging for catching this...

It appears that while construction is going on at John Adams Community College on Masonic/Hayes, they are looking to relocate students and faculty to DeAvila Elementary on Haight (b/t Masonic and Central).

Problem is, they have no parking available for the 2000+ students and 150 faculty.

They'd like all of the kind folks who drive to school to continue to park over at Masonic/Hayes and walk or take a shuttle, but that's pretty unrealistic.

In any event, there's a public meeting on this topic on Thursday, November 30th at DeAvila Elementary (1351 Haight @ Masonic) at 7pm.

And from the Haight Ashbury Beat,

Previously, City College had hoped to temporarily move into the Newcomer High School building in Pacific Heights, but the plan was rejected after a neighborhood group howled about potential traffic and parking problems. Additional plans for occupying Laguna Hills High School also fell through.
“If we didn’t have DeAvila I don’t know what we would do,” said Linda Squires Grohe, dean of City College’s John Adams campus.

According to Grohe, the parking issue is minimal since over 70 percent of students who attend the John Adams campus take public transportation. City College also plans on keeping the parking lots north of the Panhandle open to students. [more...]

There's obviously a strong NIMBY-ism to all of this, but at the same time, people's daily lives will be heavily impacted. I live near John Adams, so I guess the streets around my house will get a temporary respite...

Apparently, according to the Haight Ashbury Beat, the district intends to lease the DeAvila building to City College through the 2007-2008 school year.

Thurs. Haight Hearing to Determine Parking Future [MetrobloggingSF]
City College readies to rent DeAvila School building [Haight Ashbury Beat]

SF told to build housing, not happy about it

First, I'm back from a much-needed vacation. I'm reminded how darn cold it is in SF in November, even when it's sunny...

And on the housing front, the Examiner ran a story on Monday about how the Association of Bay Area Governments is asking SF to pull their own weight and create their fair share of housing. What a concept.

Problem is, they don't want to. Not to mention that they are THOUSANDS of units behind their last mandate from 2002.

From the Examiner,

San Francisco is protesting a new method by which Bay Area cities and towns will be asked to create new housing, in part because it would double the amount The City is recommended to build.

The method, announced by the Association of Bay Area Governments Nov. 17, creates a new way of assigning “housing responsibility” — quotas for new housing — to different cities and counties, according to ABAG spokeswoman Kathleen Cha.

To ensure that market-rate and low-income housing keeps up with population growth, California law has since 1984 required regional agencies, such as ABAG, to mandate how many new units individual cities must build. It also requires individual cities to outline how they will meet those goals — although it does not actually require cities to build housing, according to Cha.

For the first time, ABAG will create those quotas based on economic growth — those cities showing signs of job and residential growth near major transit corridors will be assigned a higher housing responsibility.

For San Francisco, ABAG will boost local quotas for the creation of new housing — which were 20,000 between 2002 and 2009 — to 40,000 between 2009 and 2016, according to San Francisco Planning Department representative Sarah Dennis. In the past seven years, The City has struggled to meet its allocation, creating only 13,000 new units by the end of 2005.

“We would be looking at 5,000 or 6,000 units a year, which San Francisco has never seen,” Dennis said. “It’s hard to imagine, especially at a time when the market is cooling off.” [more...]

Who cares if the market is cooling off? What better time to find developers looking for incentives to build? Why would a developer want to build more affordable housing in a booming market?

Where's the logic here?

Other than the fact that everyone knows of the perpetual banging-one's-head-against-the-wall when it comes to discussing the creation of new housing with our Board of Supervisors... Heaven forbid one of the districts (other than Daly-ville) would see some new construction.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Build more housing! All types of housing! All over the city!

And if the market ends up being flat for a while, more supply will only help people get into the market.

But just like a spoiled child, San Francisco doesn't like to be told what to do...

New housing formula draws protest from S.F. [Examiner]

Holiday down-time

Just a note that I'll be traveling for the Thanksgiving holiday and won't be back to posting till after the 27th. Have a great holiday!

Matt

BMR info for Fillmore Heritage Center

Just got a couple of flyers in the mail today announcing the plans and timelines for the below-market (affordable) units in the new Fillmore Heritage Center. This development is located at 1300 Fillmore @ Eddy in the historic Fillmore Jazz District.

It appears that a new group has formed around the FHC (because of it? just for this building?) called the SF Urban Community Housing Company.

The SFUrbanCHC appears to have been created by the folks behind HSM Realty (HSM stands for Haight Street Mortgage), which is a family-owned real estate company that's been around for 50 years, the same folks who appear to be running the sales office for the Fillmore Heritage Center.

Anyhow, there are a bunch of workshops coming up in December for first time homebuyers who might be interested in getting into the affordable units in this development.

There are workshops on December 7th and December 9th at the African American Art and Culture Complex @ 762 Fulton Street, but you must RSVP. Go to http://sfurbanchc.org/ for more info. Unfortunately, there's no specific info on these workshops on the site, but they also have a phone number on the flyer, which is 415-252-0949.

The application deadline isn't until February 3, 2007, but as you probably know, you'll need to attend some meetings and jump through some hoops if you want in on this deal.

SF Urban Community Housing Company [official site]
Fillmore Heritage Center [official site]
More on the Lower Fillmore and Yoshi's [SFHomeBlog]
Neighborhood dream fulfilled -- Fillmore again a place of note [SFHomeBlog]

Just one question...

Can anyone be proud of a politician whose motto that they bring to work every day is 'Fuck You'? What about when their whole family (at least the family members who are old enough to talk) has the same motto? And they all voice it publicly?

How is it that the rest of us would lose our jobs instantly (even if we work for ourselves, we'd ruin our reputations forever) with behavior like that, yet 7,241 people think that he's the best man for the job in D6 after six years of this?

At least current property owners outside of District 6 can look on the bright side: Daly will continue to restrict housing, fight with all of the other supervisors, and generally make it difficult for people to become homeowners. This will only help property values in the other districts.

The streets in D6 (of which many of the new residents have nobody to blame but themselves now) will stay filthy. Drug dealers rejoice! And all of this will just drive new owners and renters into the rest of the city, where very little new construction is happening and very little supply is available.

Ultimately, it's a sad day in San Francisco for the 700,000+ residents of San Francisco that could not vote in D6, yet will have to deal with the citywide impact that Daly's behavior will have for the next four years...

Developer wants penthouses atop armory

In yet another turn in the saga of the never-to-be-anything-but-a-drug-riddled-homeless-encampment, the owner/developer of the Armory on the corner of 14th and Mission actually broke out his spreadsheet and realized that what he originally proposed to is no longer financially feasible. So he wants to be able to sell some high-end penthouses on the roof to cover the cost of the $10M retrofit.

From today's Examiner,

The latest proposal for developing the long-abandoned armory at 14th and Mission streets calls for condominiums and penthouses, once again stirring controversy about what the old National Guard building should become.

This is not the first time the 123,000-square-foot armory is at the center of a gentrification battle. Since the National Guard abandoned the armory in 1971 about 10 proposals ranging from a movie studio to a church were offered up for the brick fortress that seems an impenetrable castle taking up the entire block of Mission Street at 14th Street.

In 2000, it became the focus of the Mission’s dot-com gentrification wars, with protesters flooding a Planning Commission meeting and arguing against a new-media office complex.

Now, Mission Armory Preservation Partners LLC aims to build 169 condominiums, including eight controversial penthouses, and roughly 30,000 square feet of office space in the 1914 armory that’s on the National Register of Historic Places.

In order for the latest proposal to pencil out financially, the penthouses must be part of the project, since they will help cover the costs of the restoration and seismic work that’s slated to cost upward of $10 million, said Brett Gladstone, an attorney representing the owner, Alpha LLC.

The penthouses would be set back from the edge of the roof, thereby creating a less obtrusive look, said Andres Grechi, design director for MBH Architects. [more...]

Imagine that... A developer that realizes that they can't afford to do a project because of all of the restrictions placed on the property by our lovely Supervisors. Be sure to thank Chris Daly. He only lives a block away, and this is in his district (albeit right on the southwestern edge). He must like abandoned buildings in his neighborhood... Although I bet you could have already guessed that...

Developer wants penthouses atop armory [SFHomeBlog]
New life for the Armory, finally? [SFHomeBlog]
Another application filed to turn Armory into housing [SFHomeBlog]

Maybe it's not over...

From an email sent by Rob Black's campaign on Wednesday...

I'm writing to let you know that over 5,000 absentee ballots cast in the election for District Six Supervisor have not yet been counted by the Department of Elections.

It is highly likely that once the ballots are counted, no candidate for Supervisor in District Six will have received over 50% of the votes, and so the outcome of the race will be determined by instant-runoff voting.

This process may take several days. I will keep you updated as soon as new information comes in.

5,000 ballots? If you followed the election, you know that it was the initial absentee vote count that put Rob in the early lead, which was then overcome by the Tuesday voters. But if there are truly 5,000 uncounted absentee ballots, Daly has GOTTA be worried.

And I'm a bit optimistic (even though Chuck at the Chronicle Blog isn't).

Because as long as I've been in SF, absentee voters have been strongly on the homeowner's side of the measures that I cared about most (usually homeowner vs. the Tenant's Union issues).

And don't forget that Daly has never gotten more than roughly 6,000 votes (update: 6,645 votes in 2002)in either of his previous elections... Even if he gets 1,500 of those uncounted ballots (which would mean 1,000 more total votes than he got last time), he still loses in the end...

I would guess that most of the new voters in the district (read: homeowners) would rather push him into traffic than vote for him, and I would also venture to guess that a significant number of his previous voters have jumped ship. So that left his grassroots effort to get as many of his 6,000 constituents out to the polls on Tuesday.

Which he did quite well.

But it might not be over for Rob Black just yet.

Wouldn't it be a sight to see Daly lose after the absentee votes and ranked-choice tally is complete?

His lovely wife may have spoken (and cursed) too soon...

Board rejects Trinity Plaza deal

In a surprising move yesterday, the Land Use Committee (headed by McGoldrick and Maxwell -- both Daly allies) and the full board shot down the chance for Trinity Plaza to move forward and instead suggested it go back to the Planning Commission. Did Daly broker too many deals on this one for even his own allies to stomach? McGoldrick wants MORE affordable housing than Daly could get?

From today's Examiner,

The Board of Supervisors rejected on Tuesday a general plan amendment that would have allowed the development to move forward, pending other approvals.

“Some members of the board seem to be working to see if there’s other things that can be done,” Daly said after the vote. When asked if the board’s decision jeopardizes the development, Daly, who was up for re-election Tuesday, said, “I am going to get another four years on the Board of Supervisors and we will have this all worked out before you know it. But if I lose, then maybe.”

Supervisors Sophie Maxwell and Jake McGoldrick have spearheaded the push to hold up the development. The two sit on the Board of Supervisors Land Use and Economic Development Committee, which is charged with holding hearings on the proposed development before the full board can take a vote on it.

“I ask that you vote [the general plan amendment] down so that it can go back to the planning committee,” Maxwell said to the board members. “There have been sufficient questions raised about this huge project that I think it warrants more time.”

McGoldrick wants to see more below-market-rate units added to the project — 15 percent not the proposed 10 percent — and he also has suggested the developer pay for new open space in the area. The no-vote puts the development in “a holding pattern,” McGoldrick said. [more...]

It's a sad day when even the the most hardened progressives on the board are going to fight over housing (after one of their own brokered the deal in the first place) and keep it from getting built. I thought this had all been worked out? Just think what an impact 1,900 units of housing could have on mid-Market. Nobody can argue that it would shift the supply/demand equation in favor of those who are looking for housing... Yet the board is still going to hold it up?

I really thought this was going to be an example of how to get housing built in the city. Sangiacomo (the project's owner/developer) made some sacrifices, but those were enough to satisfy Daly. If there's a housing project that Daly will approve, shouldn't we expect that is the last hurdle? Has the 'downtown money' softened Daly? Or is McGoldrick not seeing his name in print enough anymore? He will be up for re-election in a couple of years... Never too early to start campaigning, I guess...

Board rejects Trinity Plaza deal [Examiner]
Trinity Plaza gets OK [SFHomeBlog]
Wealthy Developer Tries to Stop Rebuilding of Trinity Plaza [SFHomeBlog]

What a shame...

and this pretty much sums it up:






Where did all of those new voters go last night? Daly won his last election with around 6,000 votes. He will be lucky to get that many this time. And Rob Black identified 7,000+ registered voters that were committed to voting for him. What happened?

And no, this is not about downtown money. This is about voter apathy. And it's a real shame.

Image courtesy of The Daly Show

Are fixed rate loans the wrong choice right now?

From today's SFGate,

Challenging conventional wisdom, a Merrill Lynch economist says homeowners who opt for fixed-rate over adjustable-rate mortgages today might regret it.

Sheryl King contends that borrowers tend to pile into fixed-rate mortgages at precisely the wrong time -- just before the Federal Reserve starts cutting interest rates. It's similar to the way investors tend to pile into stocks at the peak of the market.

Today, more borrowers are choosing fixed-rate mortgages, mainly because they don't cost much more than adjustable-rate ones.

But Merrill economists predict that the economy will soon weaken and the Federal Reserve will start cutting interest rates early next year. By the end of 2007, adjustable-rate mortgages will be significantly cheaper, but borrowers who try to refinance could run into problems.

What I find most interesting here is similar to what I see in the purchase market. Buyers always seem to be on the wrong end of the decision spectrum. Right now, there are mixed opinions about what the real estate market will do in San Francisco, but the last time we saw this kind of inventory (more, in fact) was the fall of 2001 and fall of 2002. Just like now, buyers didn't want to buy when they felt like they were the only ones who were buying. It's a mob mentality.

Whether the market stays flat, drops a couple of percent (at most), or starts shooting back up, nobody will disagree that the higher inventory right now means that there are LOADS of bargains to be had. Not in the properties that just hit the market or that are less than 30 days old, because many of those are selling with multiple offers in a few days, but the 'fringe' properties that have some sort of buyer-perceived defect.

I'm sure there are plenty of bubble theorists that will remind me that the sky has yet to fall, but we all know that I don't agree with that. I think we're coming into a typical fall market with higher inventory (yet not as high as the fall of 2001 or 2002), and we'll hit the spring market again around February or March. And between now and then, deals will be made and bargains will be had.

And the number of properties selling just stays consistent, week after week, all through 2006 (between 96 properties and 136 properties have gone 'contingent' each week this year, with more properties going straight to 'pending' as well). There's just more inventory. And this is a good thing. More inventory equals more choice, and buyers should be happy for this.

So as always, the smart fall/winter buyers will get a good house at a good price (relative to recent history), and those who have waited since 1996 for the crash will keep on waiting. And only a couple of lucky souls will actually be able to 'time' the market, either buying or selling. And not because they 'knew' anything, but because they got lucky. Remember, this is not the stock market.

Caution in picking right loan [SFGate]

Go VOTE!

I won't bother everyone with more than just a simple reminder to get out and vote, if you haven't already voted absentee.

And if you are asking, the only two things that I care enough about to promote or discuss are Prop H and District 6.

You all know that I believe Chris Daly needs to go find a new job, and I am encouraging D6 residents to vote for Rob Black. And don't buy the crap about him being bought by downtown. Look at where Daly is getting his money. At this point it is all going to come down to who is going to do a better job representing the quality of life that EVERYONE in D6 deserves. Not just the downtrodden. I strongly believe that Rob will represent everyone in the district, and find a way to really make positive changes at all levels. If you don't like Rob, you're either brainwashed by Daly or you haven't met Rob (or both). And if you don't live in D6, encourage your D6 friends to vote, too. This election has more to do with ALL of San Francisco than any other Board of Supervisors election in our generation. VOTE ROB BLACK!

As for Proposition H, it may seem like a benign piece of legislation which aims to help those who would otherwise have no options. But that's not it at all. It might help some of those folks, but mostly it will raise the cost of building ownership to the point where landlords will stop doing necessary repairs. And while I know some of you would love to find a way to do your part to bring down the real estate market, take a look around your current hovel of a rental apartment, and think about how nice it would be if your landlord cared enough to provide for a new coat of paint or some new appliances. It won't happen if Prop. H passes. And none of this is meant to say that there isn't a solution to the problem of tenant displacement, but this is another piece of Chris Daly garbage that was slipped in at 11:59pm on the night of the filing deadline. This is really about drawing attention to Daly's campaign, not solving tenant problems. VOTE NO ON PROPOSITION H!

That's it for now. Happy voting!

Falletti Foods to open on Tuesday!

As a resident of NoPa for almost ten years, I truly have missed having Falletti Foods in the neighborhood. It was in the space now occupied by Petrini Plaza and the new Albertson's, and it goes without saying that Albertson's just can't deliver the family-owned atmosphere that Falletti's always did.

But the Falletti family is back, and the new store opens on Tuesday, November 7th, on the corner of Oak and Broderick (in the new Broderick Place development). The space will also feature a Delessio Market and Bakery and a Peet's Coffee immediately, and likely more small retail in the near future.

Check out the great timeline and history of Falletti's, too. It's a truly local business.

Welcome back to the neighborhood!

Falletti Foods [official site]