San Francisco, CA
Building Decarbonization Could Push Out Low-Income Renters. A San Francisco Program Hopes to Prevent That – Inside Climate News
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.—On a Wednesday in late September, Amparo Vigil showed a contractor around the modest, three-story building she owns in San Francisco’s outer Mission District. The contractor—just one of a handful visiting the building that week—toured the top floor apartment, where Vigil lives with her grandchildren, and the two one-bedroom units she rents out on the second floor. He took a close look at the kitchens, the furnaces and the electrical paneling and used a drone to get a good view of the roof.
The building—which abuts another one Vigil’s sister and father own and out of which her family operates Puerto Alegre, one of a pair of popular Mission restaurants—is about to undergo a comprehensive renovation as one of three demonstration projects funded by the San Francisco Department of the Environment’s Healthy Resilient Homes Project.
“I know enough about climate change to know that things are getting worse, and that things have already gotten worse,” said Vigil, who has lived in the building for 28 years. Just a week earlier the city famous for its cold summers had nearly a week of 90-degree days.
Like a patient preparing for long-awaited surgery, Vigil was reticent about how the renovation project would unfold, but looking forward to feeling more prepared for the increasingly unpredictable climate.
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The list of changes include a small solar panel array, heat pumps and other all-electric appliances, an EV charger and improved insulation. The estimated cost of taking the building off natural gas completely and making it more climate resilient will be more than $125,000, but Vigil won’t be left with the bill. It will instead be paid by People Organizing to Demand Environmental and Economic Rights or PODER SF, a group whose name means “power” in Spanish that works to ensure that Mission residents have a voice in shaping policy related to housing, transportation and community development.
But PODER’s project also has a larger purpose than helping Vigil update her building. It’s designed to help advocates gauge the cost of decarbonizing low-income rental properties across the city and beyond as a group of environmental justice advocates prepare a larger plan to bring these kinds of changes to a population that has until now been mainly shut out of the clean energy transition.
In a city that looks little like it did 20 years ago, San Francisco’s outer Mission District neighborhood has remained a place for Latino families to live and work. Its central artery, 24th Street, runs past taquerias and locally-owned stores selling fresh produce and tortillas. On the Day of the Dead, it provides a route for a small, annual parade that winds its way through the neighborhood to a festival of altars where community members from across Latin America honor lost loved ones.
The fact that this neighborhood remains more or less intact after multiple waves of gentrification displaced one third of Latino Mission residents between 2000 and 2019 is no accident. It’s the result of thousands of hours of organizing by a network of community-based nonprofits that work to anchor the people to the neighborhood. And at the center of this constellation is PODER SF.
In 2023 the group saw a long-time plan come to fruition when Casa Adelante, an affordable 143-unit all-electric apartment building was finally completed. PODER had been advocating for the project since it took over a parking lot with four other groups of housing advocates in 2000.
Then, earlier this year, when PODER SF and a handful of other groups were invited by the Department of the Environment to launch the San Francisco Healthy Resilient Homes Demonstration Projects, Vigil put her name in the hat. A long-time member of PODER and life-long Mission resident, she treated her renters more like family than clients—keeping the rent below market rate and making it possible for one family to stay for decades. When another family moved out, she filled their space with a woman who had cared for Vigil’s mother in her final years, along with the caretaker’s husband and nephew.
Knowing this about Vigil, and aware that the choice to maintain what urban planners call “naturally occurring low-income housing” can keep renovations out of financial reach, PODER chose her building.
“Her home is there and her family members live there as well,” says Antonia Diaz, PODER’s organizational director. “Since we are aiming to have the retrofits covered 100 percent, there would not be any pass-through costs to the tenants.”
Building electrification is central to both the state’s greenhouse gas reduction and air quality strategies. Electric appliances can run on renewable solar, wind and hydroelectric power, and are more efficient with energy than gas appliances.The Bay Area’s air district will soon require all broken furnaces and hot water heaters to be replaced by electric heat pumps, and California aims to install 6 million heat pumps in the next five years. San Francisco’s Climate Action Plan aims to specifically phase out natural gas in all buildings by 2040.
While some state and federal funding has been made available for low-income homeowners to decarbonize, not much has made it to renters or landlords. That’s beginning to change, but some environmental justice advocates are concerned that this next wave of building electrification—like other renovations—could raise property values and increase owner turnover, resulting in rising rents and tenant displacement in communities that have already been hit hard by the state’s housing crisis. The Poder SF demonstration project, and others like it, are an effort to head off that likelihood.
“There are concerns about ‘renovictions,’ there are concerns about cost pass-throughs, and so tenant protection is a really big, explicit focus for us,” said Benny Zank, building decarbonization coordinator at the San Francisco Environment Department. The department has created a Climate Equity Hub aimed at replacing gas-fired hot water heaters with heat pumps in low-income tenants’ homes in a range of neighborhoods, in addition to the demonstration projects.
Decarbonization Without Displacement
Chelsea Kirk, a research and policy analyst at Strategic Action for a Just Economy (SAJE), a Los Angeles-based tenant’s rights nonprofit, points to other policy shifts that have put renters in danger of renovictions in the past. In LA, for instance, a seismic retrofit ordinance required landlords to upgrade 12,000 buildings to better prepare them for earthquakes.
“We’ve seen several cases of tenants being evicted, harassed and subject to illegal and shoddy construction that has made their homes unsafe as a result of that ordinance,” said Kirk, who authored a 2023 report on tenant protections in building retrofits throughout California. “Property owners used that [ordinance] as a pretext to displace people, and so we’re worried it’s going to happen again but on a wider scale” with renovations to combat climate change.
Renter protections for California tenants vary greatly by city, but the SAJE report points out that every year more than half a million renters in the state receive eviction notices.
“Many cities allow evictions when the landlord wishes to move in, repurpose, or renovate the property or unit,” the SAJE report reads. “Decarbonization work that leads to rent increases that low-income households cannot afford or to buildings that are unsafe for tenants to live in, even temporarily, will trigger more evictions.”
Kirk said SAJE wants to see preventative policies passed to better protect renters.
Poder SF had a hunch that it was possible to electrify a range of affordable housing locations in ways that would benefit both the landlord and their tenants. The group sees the demonstration project at Vigil’s building as a trial run for the state’s $500 million Equitable Building Decarbonization Program (EBD), which will roll out in 2025 and scale up in neighborhoods like the Mission.
PODER SF was one of a handful of groups that worked to ensure that the state’s upcoming EBD included limitations on rent increases for five years for small buildings and 10 years for larger buildings. The EBD program also requires that property owners commit in writing that building retrofits done through that program can’t be the basis for just cause eviction.
“It remains to be seen how well those are enforced, but it’s still really promising to see,” said Sneha Ayyagari of the climate justice-focused nonprofit Greenlining Institute, another group that advocated for inclusion of renter protections in the program. The question of enforcement is a big one, especially in the case of large corporate landlords, who are more likely to be beholden to investors than tenants.
San Francisco is known for having relatively strong protections for renters, but that doesn’t make it immune to the problems of displacement and gentrification, said Antonio Diaz, organizational director at Poder SF. Having to leave a rental unit during a renovation and look for housing in an expensive market for an extended period can leave working-class tenants in precarious situations that often push them out of the city, he said.
“Those of us working on building decarbonization from an equity perspective recognize that unless housing is a fundamental right and not a commodity for building owners to extract value from the land and tenants, vulnerable renters will be in precarious living conditions,” added Diaz.
Cutting the Cost of Electrification and Electricity Bills
Building decarbonization is also shining a light on the lack of ongoing investment in low-income housing throughout the state.
“You’re coming around talking about replacing expensive appliances, but a lot of us need to upgrade basic weatherization,” said Michelle Pierce, executive director at Bayview Hunters Point Community Advocates—another group working on a pilot project with SF Environment Department. “Many of our city’s buildings are 100 years old or older, so you’re going to go in there, ready to do this, and the foundation is crumbling. Then you’re looking at a $200,000 install, as opposed to a $10,000 job.”
In one recent case Pierce said what was supposed to be a simple hot water heater installation took three times longer than scheduled because the building required new pipes to accommodate the appliance.
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Energy costs for low-income tenants are also a significant focus of programs aiming to make the energy transition more just.
Last year, Diaz and Christine Selig, a long-time Mission resident and member of the PODER SF advisory board who worked closely on the demonstration project, co-wrote a white paper with the Natural Resource Defense Counsel (NRDC), Physicians for Social Responsibility and several other groups about the need for an equitable transition to residential electrification. “Despite using less energy on average per household, lower-income communities and communities of color spend disproportionately more on their monthly energy bills than do wealthier households,” they wrote. The median energy burden of low-income households is three times higher than other households. Despite this fact, most decarbonization programs fail to “meaningfully engage communities in program design processes, decision-making, and implementation,” they added.
In San Francisco, those same communities are increasingly vulnerable to extreme heat and wildfire smoke because many of the city’s aging buildings don’t have central heating or HVAC systems. Vigil’s building, for instance, has neither. The addition of heat pump mini splits, which provide both heating and air conditioning, will be a major improvement.
“If we have one unbearably hot day, we open the windows, and we’re surviving,” said Vigil. “If we have two hot days, we’re kind of suffocating in it. And by day three, we’re like, ‘OK, we’ve got to get out. It’s not gonna work.’”
Investing in improved insulation is key, said Selig. Despite the added efficiency, one danger of simply switching gas for electric is that the latter costs a great deal more in the Bay Area. “When you simply electrify a low-income home, the electrical bill can go up a lot,” said Selig. The addition of solar panels alongside improved insulation is the best way to ensure that doesn’t happen, she said.
“There is little comprehensive data on the true cost of a whole-home approach to decarbonization because it tends to be so cost prohibitive,” said Selig. For that reason, it hasn’t been done for low-income households.
In addition to the $75,000 Poder’s demonstration project in Vigil’s building has received from two separate city programs, she said they’re hoping to stack several other state and federal incentives and rebates to cover the rest of the cost.
Fueling Community Buy In
Despite what may seem like an obvious windfall for Vigil and her tenants, home electrification isn’t always an easy sell for landlords or tenants, says Pierce, with Bay View Hunters Point Community Advocates (BVHPCA). The organization chose to work with a community center known for its kitchen rentals for a demonstration project focused on exposing more people to induction cooking. The group has also been conducting a study of residents in the majority-Black Bayview and Hunters Point neighborhoods to get a sense of how familiar they are with the concept of building decarbonization.
“One of the things that we’ve had to explain to government officials is that for our communities, a gas stove is the kind of luxury item that it can take a family a generation to own. So people are hesitant to have it taken away,” said Pierce. She added that many residents they have polled associate electric appliances with fires and electrocution. “We find ourselves explaining that this newer stuff that we’re talking about is less likely to catch on fire than a conventional electric stove or a gas stove,” she added. “These sentiments are fixed in the culture. So we have a lot of educating to do.”
In the next phase of the work, Poder SF, BVHPCA and the national nonprofit Emerald Cities Collaborative, which is decarbonizing and retrofitting an affordable deed-restricted building as the city’s third demonstration project, hope to start planning for a broader effort to electrify all the city’s under-resourced eastern neighborhoods. Doing so would require an expensive transformer upgrade in the area and an education campaign about the values of disconnecting from the gas infrastructure.
It won’t happen fast, but advocates say that large-scale decarbonization—and the emissions reductions it promises—is only possible if low-income households are included in the plan.
“If you look at the population of California, a very high percentage of people live in multifamily buildings and a very high percentage are rent-burdened,” said the Greenlining Institute’s Sneha. “So, if you’re truly going to address the problem, you need to figure out equitable pathways to do so.”
Selig echoed that sentiment. “People say, ‘How can we put all this money into transforming building stock?’ It’s going to be a very expensive project, but it does create good jobs, and it builds resiliency—and it’s not as expensive as climate catastrophes.”
Kelechukwu Ogu contributed reporting.
This story was produced with support from the Climate Equity Reporting Project at Berkeley Journalism.
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Cross that big street
Major arteries like Market Street and Van Ness constitute mental borders for many drivers. If your destination is near a popular street, aim for the other side of it, where there’ll typically be more vacancies.
Stray uphill
Hills, too, create mental obstacles for people looking for parking. If you’re willing to walk up one of San Francisco’s many hills either before or after the show, you’ll find more spots.
Always check signs
Pay attention to posted time restrictions to avoid tickets. Some meters in San Francisco mercilessly run until 10pm. Also, street cleaning hours can start at 12am, before some shows get out.
Know when you’re beaten
Some neighborhoods are hopeless. North Beach, Nob Hill, Divisadero — forget about it. The sooner you accept this, the more inner peace you will find.
Trust your gut
I acknowledge that I am a 6’1” man, and not everyone feels as comfortable as I do walking alone at night. If you’re not a local, and you’re feeling unsure, read up on the neighborhood beforehand.
Realize the ‘right’ way can be painful too
If you’re tempted to suck it up and pay for a parking lot or garage, remember: after the show, you may be stuck for a long time in a parking-lot traffic jam as cars try to get out all at once.
Okay! On with my list, with suggested free parking areas marked red.
Where to find parking for Davies Symphony Hall, War Memorial Opera House, Herbst Theater or Bill Graham Civic Auditorium
East side of Gough Street, between Golden Gate and McAllister
Pro tip: Park on the left side of the street. Quick eats to go are almost nonexistent in the area, so pick up any pre-show provisions you may need at the Super Sam corner store.
Where to find parking for SFJAZZ, Rickshaw Stop or Mr. Tipple’s Jazz Club
North side of Oak Street between Buchanan and Octavia
Pro tip: The right lanes are almost always congested due to the upcoming freeway onramp. Watch for cars speeding down the hill behind you in the left lanes, and nose in rather than backing into the spot, if possible.
Where to find parking for the Castro Theater
Castro Street, between 14th and 16th
Pro tip: Separated from the Castro by Market Street, and up the hill a little, most people don’t think of parking here. I found a cool old metal dustpan on the street here once. Still use it.
Where to find parking for the Chapel
South Van Ness Avenue between 17th and 21st
Pro tip: Parking in the Mission District can be maddening; find solace on either the east or west side of the main artery on the edge of the neighborhood. Say hi to Whiz Burger for me.
Where to find parking for the Great American Music Hall
Franklin Street between Ellis and Geary
Pro tip: I’ve also found Geary Boulevard, between Van Ness and Franklin, to usually have open spots. (Plus, you’re right next to Tommy’s Joynt for post-show eats.)
Where to find parking for the Regency Ballroom
Franklin Street between Post and Bush
Pro tip: Separated from the venue by Van Ness, and up the hill a little, most people don’t think of parking here. Aim for the left side of this one-way thoroughfare, where parking is usually more open. Pour one out for the closed Walgreens.
Where to find parking for Mabuhay Gardens or On Broadway
Leavenworth Street between Francisco and Chestnut
Pro tip: Trying to find parking in North Beach is like repeatedly hitting yourself in the face with a hammer for a half hour. I park an entire mile away, and enjoy the walk along Columbus, which is teeming with action on weekends.
Where to find parking for the Midway
Illinois Street between 23rd and 25th
Pro tip: Do not be seduced by the road leading toward Pier 80; it looks wide open, but is full of private parking, and Pier 80 itself will be closed off.
Where to find parking for Chase Center
16th Street between Carolina and Connecticut
Pro tip: For concert parking, the Chase Center garage currently charges $75. Ahem. I think you’ll agree that a nice 10-minute stroll down 16th Street is a better alternative.
Where to find parking for the Bottom of the Hill
16th Street between Carolina and Connecticut
Pro tip: Parking’s not nearly as plentiful as it used to be here; be aware of the new-ish protected bike lanes on 17th and the many time restrictions. (Also, bring presents for the excellent staff at one of the city’s best clubs before it closes at the end of the year.)
Where to find parking for the Fillmore
Geary Boulevard between Divisadero and Scott
Pro tip: I agonized for years driving in circles on neighborhood streets until finding this wonderful stretch of Geary, down the road and on a slight curve, where no one thinks to park.
Where to find parking for the Warfield
Folsom Street between 7th and 6th
Pro tip: This one’s tough, being close to both Union Square and the Tenderloin. I shoot for the less-populated area south of Market and walk up 6th Street, home of harm-reduction services, pizza-by-the-slice joints, SROs and Tú Lan.
Where to find parking for the Brick and Mortar Music Hall or Public Works
Gough Street between Market and McCoppin
Pro tip: This is on an odd little diagonal block that’s off of most people’s radar, on the other side of a freeway overpass. It’s never let me down.
Where to find parking for Oracle Park
Harrison Street between 3rd and 4th
Pro tip: Optimal ballpark spots used to change each year. In a coincidence that I won’t overanalyze, I’ve had luck parking on this block ever since Buster Posey left the Giants in 2021.
Where to find parking for the Masonic
Van Ness Avenue or Franklin Street between Sacramento and Pine
Pro tip: Sorry, man. You will not find parking on Nob Hill. You can try driving up California while looking for a spot, but likely, you’ll have to head back and make the five-block walk.
Where to find parking for August Hall
Mission or Howard Streets, between 5th and 6th
Pro tip: The “park up the hill” trick doesn’t work here, since the nearby hill is Nob Hill. If you strike out on Mission or Howard, Folsom is often open.
Where to find parking for the DNA Lounge
Treat Street between Florida and Alameda
Pro tip: Luckily the DNA is surrounded by a pretzel of strange, short, wiggly streets, good for finding parking; head south of the freeway overpass to this hidden curve. (It’s where I parked when I saw Prince at the tiny club in 2013; yes of course I am bragging.)
Where to find parking for Golden Gate Park, Outside Lands or Hardly Strictly
Clement Street between 34th and 38th
Pro tip: The best way to get to these festivals is to throw a bike in the trunk, park near Ocean Beach, and ride in past the bison to the free bicycle parking area. Barring that, your other best bet is to park up the (very) steep hill, near the VA hospital.
Where to find parking for the Cow Palace
Geneva Avenue between Stoneridge and Carter
Pro tip: I don’t really have a pro tip for this one. I just want to say that there should be more concerts at the Cow Palace, which is cool as hell.
Where to find parking for Stern Grove
Portola Drive between San Fernando and Santa Clara
Pro tip: Park across the major artery of 19th, and up the hill a little bit. And, since Stern Grove concerts always take place on Sundays, there are no two-hour parking restrictions to contend with.
Where to find parking for the Independent
Divisadero Street between O’Farrell and Turk
Pro tip: You’ll have to go back in time to when you could park at the DMV lot, because this neighborhood is impossible now. I go down the hill a ways, and usually find a spot north of Primo Pizza.
Where to find parking for the Black Cat
East side of Van Ness Avenue, between Turk and Ellis
Pro tip: Aim for Van Ness, the west boundary of the Tenderloin. For a major thoroughfare, Van Ness often surprises me with open spots, especially on the east side heading north.
Where to find parking for Cafe du Nord or Swedish American Hall
16th Street between Guerrero and Sanchez
Pro tip: Once the daycare that’s just east of Dolores on 16th closes for the day, the white curb — which tends to scare off many drivers — is free for you to park at. Bonus points for the view of the Mission Dolores basilica, just a beautiful building.
The SF venues you don’t need my help parking at
San Francisco is having a civic nervous breakdown because the brother of President Donald Trump’s son-in-law is buying a minority stake in the Giants.
Not Donald Trump. Not Jared Kushner. Joshua Kushner. And not control of the team. A minority stake.
Apparently, that is enough to send parts of San Francisco’s activist and media culture into full panic mode.
One Giants employee posted a video from Oracle Park turning in their uniform and quitting because Kushner was buying into the team.
Social media lit up with complaints about “MAGA ownership” and Trump-world influence invading one of San Francisco’s most beloved civic institutions.
There is just one problem. Joshua Kushner is not exactly Steve Bannon in a Giants cap.
He has historically donated heavily to Democrats and has occupied a very different political lane than his brother Jared and the Trump orbit. But nuance never stood a chance here.
For some in San Francisco, the name “Kushner” was enough. That is the story.
The Giants are not some random expansion franchise nobody cares about. They are one of the oldest and most storied franchises in Major League Baseball history — with eight World Series titles and a lineage that includes Willie Mays, Barry Bonds, Buster Posey, Madison Bumgarner, and Bruce Bochy.
Oracle Park is one of the great settings in American sports. Giants-Dodgers is still one of baseball’s defining rivalries. Generations of Northern Californians are emotionally attached to this team.
Which is precisely why the reaction has been so revealing.
Nobody was arguing about payroll. Nobody was debating the farm system. Nobody was asking whether this helps the Giants close the gap with the Dodgers in the NL West.
The panic was political from the first pitch.
That tells you where we are now.
Sports ownership used to be judged mostly by whether owners were competent, stable, and willing to spend money to win. Now it is an ideological background check.
Who donated to whom? Who attended what fundraiser? Whose brother married whose daughter? Who might show up in the owner’s suite?This is what happens when politics becomes religion. Everything becomes a loyalty test. Even baseball.
The irony is almost too perfect.
San Francisco is not exactly at risk of becoming a MAGA beachhead because a Democratic donor with the wrong last name bought a small piece of the Giants. But symbolic politics runs the city now.
In Democrat circles in San Francisco, politics is not just something people believe. It is something they perform. It is identity. It is status. It is social sorting.
So even indirect association becomes contamination. Joshua Kushner does not have to be Trump. He does not even have to be conservative. He just has to be Kushner.
That is enough.
To be fair, Giants ownership was already politically sensitive. Current owner Charles Johnson has drawn years of criticism for conservative political donations.
So this latest development landed on dry grass.
Still, the reaction says more about San Francisco’s liberal elite than it does about the Giants. The city’s activist class cannot even let baseball remain baseball.
A minority owner becomes a political emergency. A family connection becomes a scandal. A business transaction becomes a moral crisis.
This is not normal.
Fans used to argue about batting orders and pitching rotations. Now they investigate ownership family trees.
And the Giants are not being bought by Donald Trump. They are not being turned into a Trump campaign surrogate. They are not replacing team mascot Lou Seal with a MAGA hat.
A minority stake is changing hands. That’s it.
Yet for the loudest voices in San Francisco, even that apparently requires public anguish.
If this is the reaction to the brother of Trump’s son-in-law buying a minority piece of the Giants, imagine what happens if Donald Trump ever throws out the first pitch at Oracle Park.
Jon Fleischman, a longtime strategist in California politics and a lifelong baseball fan, writes at SoDoesItMatter.com.
San Francisco, CA
Casting shade on shadows: S.F. supervisor seeks to bar using shadows to block new housing
Shadows cast by tall and not-so-tall buildings alike have long been used to block housing in San Francisco, and Supervisor Bilal Mahmood wants it to end.
The District 5 legislator is announcing a law on Thursday that would eliminate the ability for people to say shadows cast by a building are an “environmental concern” that can be used to delay, and possibly block, new housing.
“In San Francisco, we’ve literally paid the price of being too afraid of our own shadow,” Mahmood said, pointing to data showing that shadow-based concerns were used to delay or block 2,195 housing units in 11 projects since 2017.
Whenever a new housing project is proposed in the city, its developer must create an environmental impact report on a variety of factors, like toxic waste and seismic hazards.
San Francisco requires that report to include a shadow analysis noting whether the new building will cast shade on any open space in the city. Mahmood’s legislation would get rid of that requirement; it is not in state guidelines, and most California cities do not consider shadows an environmental factor.
The environmental impact report is intended to help politicians make an informed decision about whether to approve or deny a development proposal. But any resident can file an appeal if they think environmental impacts were not fully considered, which can delay, block, or alter projects.
Shadows ultimately led to a delay for the infamous 469 Stevenson St. project from 2021, a 495 unit building on the site of a Nordstrom parking lot in SoMa.
Some SoMa residents were concerned that the project, which contained about 100 affordable housing units, would gentrify the area.
But gentrification alone is not a legal reason for supervisors to block a project. So residents filed an appeal alleging the project’s environmental impacts were improperly evaluated. The Board of Supervisors ended up siding with them in an 8-3 vote, citing shadows cast on nearby Mint Plaza in their decision.
The developer was forced back to the drawing board and had to redo his environmental report, delaying the project by several years.
Even when projects are 100 percent affordable, shadows cast uncertainty: Residents near 16th and Mission’s “La Maravilla” housing project, a 380-unit project next door to Marshall Elementary that broke ground last month, raised concerns that the development would darken the school’s playground. That forced the nonprofit developers to hold meetings and negotiate with residents about the issue.
Mahmood said even if appeals are ultimately rejected, the length and cost of the appeals process makes it difficult to produce housing projects and leads developers to avoid building in San Francisco.
“The housing problems we’re facing are death by a thousand cuts,” said Witt Turner of the Housing Action Coalition, a proponent of the bill. “We need to start sewing them up one by one.”
San Francisco is required by the state to plan for 36,000 more housing units by 2030, and the city’s best guess is that even under the most favorable scenarios developers will build less than half of that, and in four times as much time.
Mahmood, a YIMBY, has made streamlining housing a focus of his 15 months in office. His new legislation eliminates certain intermediate appeals and hearings and shortens appeal timelines, mostly from 30 days to 15 days.
The bill will be evaluated by the planning commission and the Board of Supervisors in early summer.
The bill is no silver bullet, however. Environmental appeals often cite more than just shadows when seeking to change projects. In the case of the Nordstrom parking lot building, for example, a failure to properly consider the seismic impact of a building was also a component of the decision.
YIMBYs have long pursued reform to CEQA, a California law outlining the environmental appeals process.
“We shouldn’t let outdated laws get in the way of building housing, which is actually important to making progress on our climate goals,” Mahmood said.
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