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Livable California
Press Conference
455 Golden Gate Ave (btw Polk & Larkin)
San Francisco, California
2:00 PM PT - 3:00 PM PT
Livable California is teaming up with Coalition to Preserve LA
to host a Press Conference in response to Senator Scott Wiener's
release of SB-50, the new iteration of SB-827, which proposed
high-density housing near transit.
You're invited to join us. TOMORROW - Wed., 12/5 at 2:00 pm
Who: Livable California (No CA) and Coalition to Preserve LA (So CA)
What: Senator Scott Wiener's SB-50 (revised SB-827)
When: Wed. December 5, 2018 at 2:00 pm
Where: Hiram W. Johnson State Office Building, 455 Golden Gate Ave (btw Polk & Larkin), San Francisco 94102
We have an impressive line-up of speakers to address SB-50's
unprecedented targeting of working-class and middle-class single-family
neighborhoods. Scores of communities and small business districts
statewide would be upzoned and destroyed to make place for large
apartment complexes, owned by investor corporations intent on profits,
not people.
SB-50 is a significant effort to continue state takeover of local planning and zoning. It seeks to accomplish the following:
- Allow large apartment complexes in all single-family neighborhoods and business districts within 1/4-mile of "high quality" bus corridors --bus routes with 15-minute service during peak traffic, or 20-minute service in off-peak.
- Allow large apartment complexes in all single-family neighborhoods and business districts within a 1/2-mile radius of a transit stop, similar to Wiener's unsuccessful SB 827.
- The key concession, on the heels of SB 827, is zoning protection for any single-family home or apartment currently being rented to tenants, or occupied by renters in the previous seven years. These would escape demolition by developers.
SB
50 is silent on how much affordable housing the bill will require
developers to provide in the large, market-rate apartment complexes that
fuel gentrification and rising land costs. SB 50 also contains no
protections for needed open space, land promised for parks, or
long-protected historic assets. As in previous years, it seems to forget
that cities don't build housing; builders do.
According to our analysis, because of San Francisco's extensive bus lines and transit lines, single-family zoning in San Francisco will be wiped out entirely. The only exception appears to be buildings in which renters now live, or lived, in the seven years before developers apply for the upzoning.
In Los Angeles single-family zoning and density limits in business districts would be nullified in large sectors of Los Angeles and its suburbs.The result would be potential destruction of many diverse, working-class and middle-class Latino, black and Asian single family neighborhoods.
Join us tomorrow - rain or shine.
Speakers for Livable California include Pat Burt, former Palo Alto mayor and City Council, Liang Chao - Cupertino, newly elected City Council member, Norma Garcia, Director of Policy & Advocacy, Mission Economic Development Agency (MEDA) and Susan Kirsch, Founder, Livable California. Speakers for Coalition to Preserve LA include Executive Director Jill Stewart and others.
As in previous years, this housing legislation is being rolled out with a mantra of "We have a housing crisis. It's urgent. We have to do something." We agree there is a housing problem that needs to be and can be solved. But the chorus of voices calling this an emergency--after two years and more than 25 Sacramento housing bills, should indict the legislators, not cities. They try to justify more laws that undermine community planning as expressed in General Plans and Housing Elements. This is unacceptable. This is the real crisis--the effort to move decision-making about community life, infrastructure, and well-being from local hands into the hands of legislators influenced by big business
Organization: Livable California
Contact: Susan Kirsch
Contact Phone: 415-686-4375
Contact Email:
Website: http://livablecalifornia.org