Architecture for Humanity - SF
Friday, March 12, 2004
With all eyes on Newsom, he is talking about setting a housing policy coalition to bridge the diversity of political groups and come back to the debate of low income housing now that Prop J has lost. Or perhaps to re-assert measures like Prop J, M, Care Not Cash, but in slightly less sneaky and devisive terms. The activists want to see him make good on his candidacy rhetoric of building real affordable hosuing for the city’s poor. The debate though gets at the heart of the political divide in this city: what type of housing needs to be built, where, what is the inventory of city-wide available parcels, what are the plans for them and how do they include the lowest wage earners, how do we protect housing for the middle class without losing it to an abundance of loft and luxury condo space? There are those who want to let the free market decide our land values and definition of affordability, Willie Brown himself said no one making under fifty thousand should have the right to live here, against those who want to force developers to build the necessary affordable hosuing neglected for the past 30 years because in Critical SF it should be the only investment available right now. And that is what the Trinity Battle gets at, who shall decide how, when, and where to protect our affordable housing stock?
Supervisor McGoldrick wrote this article about his recent ordinance proposal Public Benefits Incentive Zoning (PBIZ), a mechanism and framework for allowing developers to exceed existing height/density limits by providing varieties of any Public Benefits. Not only housing is needed to save our crisis, but new relationships between community stakeholders and developers must be steered by our policy to reverse the trend of speculative land values.
Matt Smith : On Prop J
Home Prices Not Fully at Fault: Report examines reasons for state's housing shortage.
Red Tape Tangles Hotel Renovation
Whatever Happened to Bryant Park? : City planning lessons lurk in the open pit where a family housing complex is finally set to rise.
Oakland & Housing Grants
HOMELESS NEWS
"Mayor Newsom's fifth day on the job included a meeting with Philip Mangano, who heads the federal Interagency Council on Homelessness, which the Bush administration brought back to life to better coordinate federal outlays for the various pieces of the homeless puzzle: substance abuse, job training and mental health services. Mangano is a visionary. He wants to attack homelessness through a series of 10-year regional programs that focuses on results-driven techniques. It's a different approach, one that outside-the-box mayors might be willing to try.
Something more about the president's point man on homelessness: He doesn't come from Republican central casting.
Mangano is a former director of services for homeless people in Cambridge, Mass. He calls himself a "homeless abolitionist," which explains why he likes to quote William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass. He says the French philosopher Simone Weil and St. Francis of Assisi are his "patron saints." After seeing Franco Zeffirelli's "Brother Sun, Sister Moon" -- a movie about St. Francis -- he gave up his career as a music agent and manager for bands such as Buffalo Springfield and Peter, Paul and Mary.
Where did he go after leaving the music industry? To Boston, to work on a bread line." (SFGATE, Sun. 03.07)
SAN FRANCISCO Mayor Picks Panel to Tackle Homelessness: Broad council of 33 members has until July to craft new plan.
Alioto Seeks Unity For the Homeless
Kroc Money in the Tenderloin
Containerization of Housing
