Housing Startup Managed SRO Damaged in Fire

By Laura Waxmann and Laura Wenus : missionlocal – excerpt

Up until the five-alarm fire damaged the Graywood single room occupancy hotel and left 58 tenants without a place to live, the SRO was managed by a housing startup that matches roommates and manages co-living spaces for young professionals.

Under its management, the Graywood’s tenants began to include tech workers and others able to pay up to $1,400 a month for a room, compared to the $681 a month the building’s traditional low-income tenants were paying.

After the fire, the Graywood’s landlord, Dipak Patel, ended the hotel’s lease with Alon Gutman and Danny Haber’s housing startup, Negev. The two-year-old company has a history of leasing SROs and renting some, if not all, of their rooms to young professionals, students, and entrepreneurs.

Patel said he took over management from Negev so that he could begin repairs, which are now underway.

Several tenants who rented through Negev said that the company’s management was unresponsive to their inquiries and confusion arose over access to units in the hotel.

“They are not talking to us,” said one younger, newer tenant, who booked his room on a three-month contract through Negev. In San Francisco for an internship, the tenant declined to give his name, but said he only spent a week at the hotel before fire struck.

Attempts to contact Negev on Monday to gain access to the building led nowhere for the intern. He said he was told by a resident manager who lives on site and “moves tenants into the SRO rooms for Negev” that he would be let into the building at 9 a.m to retrieve some of his belongings.

But by 2 p.m., the displaced tenant was still waiting for the management to show. “I think the managers have as much info as we do — nothing,” he said.

Carlos Velasquez, the resident manager, on Tuesday that he indeed had been unable to reach Negev. “Many tenants are asking me if they will get their rent back. I don’t know what to tell them.”

Following multiple calls to Negev, a representative offered to put the intern up at one of the company’s other locations. The representative offered him a 20 percent discount on a $1,400 room that came with three roommates.

The intern, who was paying $1,200 for his own room at the Graywood, said he declined the offer.

The option to relocate was not extended to other Graywood tenants who rented with Negev. Instead, some said that they received emails announcing that they would be billed for June’s rent.

“I wrote them and said ‘don’t charge me because the building burned down,’” said a student who resided at the Graywood for less than a week and also requested to remain anonymous. “They emailed me back and said I had to write a more formal cancellation email.”

The confusion continued on Wednesday, when the SRO tenants were permitted to enter the burned building for the first time under the supervision of building inspectors.

Neither Gutman or Haber were present to answer questions about the tenant’s contracts.

Housing for Young Professionals

On its website, Negev offers five locations throughout the city with rooms renting between $900-$2,000. The hotels come with descriptions like “social, ambitious and driven interns,” aiming to match tenants with similar interests and personality types… (more)

RELATED:
Legal problems continue for two negev tech communes (from 2014 SF Examiner article)

 

Terrible housing bill slowed down — for now

By Tim Redmond : 48hills – excerpt

California came within days of adopting a law that would have taken away the right of the public to have a hearing about major real estate developments.

The measure would have not only threatened neighborhoods suffering from displacement linked to luxury housing; it would also have prevented planners and community activists to negotiate and demand higher level of affordable housing.

Those negotiations are common in SF, and have often convinced developers to add more affordability and change their plans.

Initially, objections by environmental, labor organizations, and local governments were disregarded by Governor Brown and the legislators. But last night the proposal was stopped (at least temporarily) by a last minute mobilization of grassroots activists from across the state.

The proposal, known as “by right” development, was introduced less than a month ago by Brown. It was on a fast track for approval because it was attached to the state budget, which must be approved by June 15.

Governor Brown described the proposal as an “affordable housing” plan because it required qualifying projects to offer some inclusionary housing – but as little as five to ten percent for sites within a half mile of a transit stop (housing further away from transit would be need to provide ten to 20 percent inclusionary housing – steering more luxury housing nearest to transit).

The proposal was called “by right” development because if a projects includes the minimum affordable housing requirements, developers would have the “right” to build whatever the zoning allowed. No environmental impact analysis. No public hearings. No opportunity to publicly raise concerns about demolitions of housing, lost jobs, or impacts on small businesses… (more)

This year is not business as usual for politicians and their supporters.

Housing developers brace for future with San Francisco’s affordable requirements doubled

Blanca Torres : bizjournals – excerpt

San Francisco voters approved Prop. C, a ballot measure that will more than double the city’s affordable housing requirement for new housing projects.

Housing developers and their supporters are now bracing for how to make future developments financially feasible in a city where building housing is already costly and takes several years.

“In a softening market, (Prop. C) will be the nail in the coffin” for some projects, said Lou Vasquez, founder and principal of development firm Build, which has plans to build 900 homes at India Basin along the city’s southern waterfront.

Supporters of the initiative said it would help produce more affordable housing in a city where home prices and rents have skyrocketed in recent years. Approximately 67 percent of voters embraced the measure while 33 percent rejected it.

But opponents argued that the policy will decrease the overall supply of housing by raising the cost of development.

Previously, the city’s policy required new projects to set aside 12 percent of units on-site as affordable housing, or build off-site units, pay a fee or donate land to fulfill the requirement. Under Prop. C, projects are required to have 25 percent on-site inclusionary housing or 33 percent off-site or paid as a fee… (more)

SF pushing changes to affordable housing requirements, short-term rental rules

By Joshua Sabatini : sfexaminer – exerpt

Ushering in a new era of housing policy, San Francisco has proposed a tougher rule on short-term rentals like Airbnb and will vote today on legislation to increase affordable housing requirements.

Legislation from supervisors Aaron Peskin and Jane Kim would impose new affordable housing requirements on development, should voters in June approve Proposition C, a charter amendment that would allow the Board of Supervisors to adjust the requirements rather than voters, who currently have that power.

With thousands of homes wending their way through the planning process and the future of development at stake, the board is poised to vote on the legislation today after it advanced Monday out of the board’s Land Use and Economic Development committee.

The law would impose a 25 percent affordable housing requirement for new developments with at least 25 homes. The current requirement is 12 percent for projects with at least 10 units.

While last week the committee hammered out controversial details of grandfathering provisions, on Monday Supervisor Scott Wiener outright opposed the legislation, arguing it could mean a “de-facto moratorium,” even though he has endorsed Prop. C…

Every unit counts

As San Francisco is poised to increase its affordable housing requirements, The City may also be ready to add more restrictions on short-term rentals like Airbnb, which have been widely blamed for gobbling up existing housing.

Today, Supervisor David Campos will introduce legislation to require websites like Airbnb to only list short-term rental opportunities with a verified registration number or face fines of up to $1,000 daily … (more)

RELATED:
Airbnb, HomeAway would police rentals under proposed SF law

Community Leaders Strategize Against Displacement

By Laura Waxmann : missionlocal – excerpt

Leaders from three different communities razed by displacement shared their experiences and offered ideas on policy-based strategies to thwart gentrification in a day-long workshop hosted at the Mission’s Galeria de la Raza on Monday.

Though separated by hundreds of miles, the struggles of Los Angeles’ Boyle Heights, San Diego’s Logan Heights, and San Francisco’s Mission District run parallel, agreed community activists, preservationists, and city planners from each of the these neighborhoods who convened to discuss what has worked — and what needs to happen next — in keeping these communities in tact.

“I see stark similarities in these communities,” said panelist Carolyn Vera, an activist fighting the gentrification of Boyle Heights. “I hope to see connections form on how we can try to organize, create strategies, and use urban planning policies to promote equitable and livable neighborhoods for low-income communities.”

These strategies could come in the form of organizing, community planning, or cultural preservation. Titled “Displacing Gentrification,” the workshop came as part of the California Preservation Foundation’s 2016 statewide conference, with a number of events and workshops taking place throughout the city from April 16-20.

Using state law to address displacement locally, City Planner David Diaz explained how community organizers could implement the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, as a tactic to halt development projects. The law has long been a thorn in developers’ sides.

“The adoption of the CEQA is a diamond of democracy,” said Diaz, explaining that under this law, developers are mandated to reveal a “true, comprehensive roster of issues” that are going to negatively impact communities in the long-term.

In San Francisco, Diaz said communities should push for environmental review even of small projects to build the case that a lack of affordability leads directly an “undue regressive impact” for minority communities and small businesses.

“We have to say that all these small actions over a two to four year period are having a devastating structural impact and that the city has to start to address it by revisiting the entire residential permitting process,” said Diaz. “The city should continue to have a real estate market but that market, in order to get building permits, has to self-discipline and has to respond to the affordability crisis.”

Community organizing as well as documenting historic context are other crucial tactics in changing city zoning laws and putting in place protections to combat displacement, for which the Mission is “ground zero,” said Anne Cervantes, director and founder of the San Francisco Latino Historical Society.

Cervantes hoped that the dialogue generated throughout the day would provide those in attendance with the “tools and connections” to building a statewide partnership and lay the foundation for launching legislative initiatives against displacement.

“There is a network here of city planners, housing and community organizers with the tools we need to fight back,” said Cervantes.

Yes, gentrification will hit the Tenderloin

By John Elberling : 48hills -excerpt

Market forces are too powerful, and no neighborhood in San Francisco is safe

n an admirable burst of optimism, a current BeyondChron post concludes that, unlike the rapidly gentrifying Mission District, the Tenderloin is not “… transforming itself into a place that low-income residents will no longer be able to afford. That’s not ever going to happen.”

The rationales offered for this bold prediction are:

• There are few Tenderloin home ownership opportunities – single family homes or flats that could be converted to condos or TIC’s, so Ellis Act evictions will not become a “challenge.”

• The limited amount of new market-rate housing that is built in the Tenderloin is consistently rental, not ownership.

• There is no major retail shopping street or strong retail base to support new market-rate housing populations in general.

• Local zoning and citywide SRO protections prevent its residential hotels from being torn down and replaced with market-rate housing.

• Since the 1980s, various nonprofits have bought about 25% to 33% of the Tenderloin’s housing units and will keep them permanently affordable.

Unfortunately, this is a compendium of wishful thinking that ignores actual facts on the ground and capitalist economics, combined with an artificially narrow field of view… (more)

The 5M Project has zero affordable housing

By Dyan Ruiz : sfexaminer – excerpt

Forty percent is really zero percent when it comes to the affordable housing supposedly tied to the 5M Project.

Despite the eleventh hour deal, claims that the luxury office and housing development has 40 percent affordable housing are misleading and false. In fact, we’re left with zero affordable housing units tied to the massive Fifth and Mission development, even though we need new affordable housing now more than ever.

The 5M deals break San Francisco’s laws governing the Inclusionary Housing Program. If approved by the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, 5M will set a dangerous precedent for development throughout The City enabling developers to make up their own rules to get out of their affordable requirements.

The 5M Project proposes 600 units of luxury housing in two towers. The 45-story, 400 unit luxury condo tower would be all market rate. Among these condos, there are no affordable home ownership opportunities. There’s no place for SoMa’s low-income, working class families, seniors and immigrants to have an ownership stake in the new SoMa.

The rental building has 200 luxury apartments. The 87 proposed onsite below-market-rate (BMR) apartments might be below market, but they are anything but affordable! Onsite BMR rental must be targeted to people at 55 percent of the area median income (AMI), but these units are for people making 100 percent to 150 percent AMI. The 2-bedrooms will range from $2,293/month to $3,439/month in rent.

Because the on-site units are far more costly than the law allows, the developer, Forest City, is proposing to compensate by providing some offsite affordable units. According to the current law, in order for these to count, developers must build the offsite affordable housing before their market rate units. In violation of the law, Forest City proposed to turn over a parking lot at 967 Mission St. to The City. But the developer is not actually building the 83 “affordable senior housing units.”…

Our “SoMa Community Vision” shows there could be just as much housing on the 5M site, 687 units, by capping the heights at the highest currently allowed, 160 feet. Our vision includes ground floor open space and retail, over 200,000 square feet of office, and 50 percent onsite affordable housing in keeping with The City’s Housing Balance policy. This would have much less shadow, wind and open space impacts.

The 5M Project provides nothing our community needs. In fact, the only thing it guarantees is segregation. It means most SoMa residents can’t live there. Instead of following city laws in place to create new affordable housing, Forest City wants to get away with building only their profit-driven office and residential towers, while the community gets no affordable housing. Transactions don’t make inclusive cities. In this housing crisis, we need more than smoke, mirrors and PR. We need affordable housing that is real, onsite and guaranteed.

The Board of Supervisors must reject the 5M deal, or we’ll never get affordable housing from market rate developers.

Dyan Ruiz is a member of the SoMa Action Committee (SMAC), a community coalition concerned with displacement in SoMa… (more)

 

Kink.com Says Prop. I Will Kill Plans for SF’s Own Madison Square Garden

By Jeremy Lybarger : sfweekly – excerpt

Real estate, like porn, is about selling a fantasy. In the Mission, a porn mogul is using his talents — and his mailing list — to sell the fantasy of San Francisco’s very own Madison Square Garden. Some of the neighbors aren’t buying it.

Peter Acworth, CEO of fetish porn studio Kink.com, dreams of opening a full-time events venue inside the Armory, Kink’s fortress-like headquarters and the largest building in the Mission. The problem is that the Armory’s 40,000-square-foot Drill Court is currently zoned PDR (Production, Distribution, and Repair), meaning it’ll need to be rezoned as an entertainment space before it can host more than one event per month.

Proposition I, the ballot measure that would freeze new construction in the Mission for at least 18 months, would also freeze the permitting process — and torpedo Acworth’s ambitions to create the city’s newest premier nightlife destination… (more)

SF Mission Gentrification at ‘Advanced Stage’

By Emma Neiman : missionlocal – excerpt – (includes slides)

The Mission District – one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods 25 years ago – is in “an advanced stage of gentrification” and is now comparable to some parts of the South Bay, such as Sunnyvale, a suburb with an average median income of around $106,000, according to a recent study by two Berkeley researchers.

While the Mission’s average median income – is around $74,000 – it is on its way to higher levels, according to recent economic trends.   However, because there remains much more to be gentrified, there is also potentially much that can be done to prevent the neighborhood from arriving to an “end state,” according to the researchers Miriam Zuk and Karen Chapple.

“…to ensure a long-term supply of affordable housing in the Mission, affordable housing production, in addition to preservation of the existing stock, is key,” they wrote.

Looking at data from 1990 to 2013, the researchers created a scale to measure gentrification based on demographic changes such as increases in educational attainment, median income, and real estate investment. They found that, thanks to two tech booms, its attractive “cultural richness,” and its proximity to transportation, the Mission has experienced a rapid gentrification like no other neighborhood in the Bay Area, according to Zuk.

“High income households [move] into the region, looking for accessible, cool, young neighborhoods,” she explained. The attractiveness of the Mission specifically, she added, “in part it has to do with the age of the new workers that are arriving and in part it has to do with the character of the neighborhood and in part the accessibility of the neighborhood.”

The study shows how quickly and sharply the Mission has changed… (more)

Mapping Displacement and Gentrification in the San Francisco Bay Area

http://www.urbandisplacement.org/map

The Bay Area’s booming jobs and housing market necessitates a careful look at the causes and consequences of neighborhood change to protect residents that are most vulnerable to potentially being displaced. Wages for the Bay Area’s low income residents have not kept pace with the sky-rocketing housing prices resulting in massive demographic shifts in the area.

UC Berkeley analyzed regional data on housing, income and other demographics to better understand and predict where gentrification and displacement is happening and will likely occur in the future. This analysis, which is summarized in the interactive maps, will allow communities to better characterize their experience and risk of displacement and to stimulate action. The analysis behind these maps was validated through in-depth case studies of 9 Bay Area communities and with the support and advice of the Regional Prosperity Plan at the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. In developing 8 neighborhood displacement typologies, communities can better understand where they’re at and develop actions to prevent from advancing in the stages of gentrification and displacement.

Key Findings

• In 2013, 48 percent of census tracts and more than 53 percent of low-income households lived in neighborhoods at risk of or already experiencing displacement and gentrification pressures.
• Neighborhoods with rail stations, historic housing stock, an abundance of market rate developments and rising housing prices are especially at risk of losing low-income households.
• Low income neighborhoods are not the only ones experiencing displacement pressures – many higher income neighborhoods that still house low income households are also rapidly losing low income population.
• The number of tracts at risk of displacement are 123% higher than the numbers already experiencing them, indicating that the transformation of the Bay Area will continue to accelerate… (more)