Growing smarter
While Alameda struggles with growth issues, it’s good to step back and see that the issues are similar everywhere. Check out this piece in today’s Chronicle:
A successful rezoning design will flow from the following basic premises:
The fight against global warming starts at home. Our struggle to address climate change demands that we build new housing and jobs near transit. We must increase density in ways that do not sacrifice the things we like about our city. Many cities around the world are engaged in precisely this discussion. Because a great deal of our transit infrastructure is in the Eastern Neighborhoods, this is a logical place to incrementally add density. We have an obligation to show real environmental leadership to the Bay Area and can’t allow narrow NIMBY sentiments to derail this huge responsibility.
Stop displacement in our neighborhoods. Because people want to live and work here for a wide variety of reasons, our population will continue to grow. If we fail to build housing for this influx of new people, we only shift the demand pressures onto existing housing, as seen during the recent housing boom. We strongly oppose displacement of residents and jobs. A better solution to “gentrification” is to produce more housing, not less.
We must build more housing for the middle class. Our most important workforce is increasingly forced out the city because of exorbitant housing costs. There are large numbers of middle-income families in San Francisco who earn too much to qualify for below-market-rate, subsidized housing, yet cannot afford market-rate housing. Our policies do virtually nothing to help them. We must create incentives for workforce housing by encouraging increased density and heights on transit corridors and allowing flexibility in unit sizes.
New development must contribute to affordable housing, parks, better transit and other public benefits. Clearly, fees attached to private development can help pay for this. This is necessary because federal and state support for housing has declined drastically and the city’s own resources are severely constrained. However, it is crucial that we set our policies wisely. There will be less funding available for these amenities if excessive fees and other charges imposed by the city make projects infeasible. We cannot set fees and charges that discourage investment, and we must be sensible about how much benefit we mandate from developers. Realistic plans must be supported by independent feasibility studies that have broad political support.
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