On Friday, the state appeals court ruled that the housing element of San Francisco’s general plan does, in fact, need an environmental review.
The decision Friday by the First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco was a victory for neighborhood organizations, mostly in the western part of the city, that formed San Franciscans for Livable Neighborhoods to challenge the housing element of the city’s general plan. They argued that the proposal would concentrate development in their areas and cause overcrowding.It’s only gradually becoming clear to people who do housing in San Francisco what this means. It’s arguable, for instance, that until this is sorted out, there can’t be any housing built in San Francisco. It’s also possible that all decisions need to be made under the 1990 plan, which would have very different (and probably disasterous) standards. What’s certain is that all major projects, especially things like Octavia Boulevard and the community-based planning work that’s resulted in the Eastern Neighborhoods Plan and in SoMa, will come under serious procedural question.
The decision may, conceivably, result in an effective housing moratorium in San Francisco. That’s clearly not a good thing, since we desperately need affordable housing, but it may have the backhandedly beneficial result of temporarily making land more affordable, since whoever buys it will have to wait until a new plan is in place to build dense, or maybe any, housing.
What this does bring to mind, however, is the Bicycle Plan. In both cases, the city tried to slide by without doing an Environmental Impact Report, and in both cases the attempted shortcut came back to bite the city. I am not sure where in the city the blame lies–whether it’s with the Planning Department, with the City Attorney, or maybe with the Board of Supes, but whoever’s at fault here, please cut it out. We’re being held hostage by a bunch of NIMBYs and pro-car zealots, and we’re giving them the power to do it by trying to cut corners.
The most frustrating thing is that we’re trying to cut corners in an area that is–or should be, anyway–our strength. Both increased bicycle use and increased housing density are environmentally beneficial. They wanna review it? I say, bring it on! I understand that people don’t want to wait the year for the studies to be done, but it’s a lot better, as we’ve discovered now twice, than having your entire plan put on hold while the study’s done.