San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
State scolds S.F. on proposed Mission apartment changes
State housing officials have a message to San Francisco: You can’t chop a floor off of a proposed housing project, even if the shorter development would have the same number of units as the taller one.
San Francisco’s efforts to appease Mission District neighbors by cutting a proposed apartment building near Dolores Park from six to five stories was a violation of state law, according to a letter sent to city officials from the California Department of Housing and Community Development.
In a Dec. 29th letter to the San Francisco Planning Department the agency, known has HCD, concluded that by scaling back a proposed 19-unit group housing building at 3832 18th St. the city had violated the “State Density Bonus Law,” which allows code-compliant developments with certain levels of affordable housing to exceed local height restrictions.
The letter comes more than a year after the Planning Commission approved a shorter version of the project. While the alternative project had the same number of units as the original proposal — the apartments are micro studios — it did so by eliminating 15 bike parking spaces as well as a community room with a communal kitchen. The project calls for three, below market rate units affordable to an individual earning 80% of area median income, currently $77,000.
That decision was appealed to the Board of Supervisors by two opposing groups: YIMBY Law, the pro-housing legal advocacy organization that argued that the original project should have been approved; and neighbors who felt even the reduced, five-story building would cast shadows and block sunlight.
In the letter, HCD said that the approval of the scaled-back building was contrary to the state density bonus law which allows the developer to exceed 18th Street’s 40-foot height limit by two stories.
In its letter, David Zisser, HCD’s assistant deputy director of local government relations and accountability, stated that “a local agency is not permitted to apply any development standard that physically precludes the construction of a qualifying density bonus project at its permitted density.”
The law only allows state density bonus projects to be reduced or rejected if the project would have an “adverse impact ... upon health, safety, or the physical environment,” would have “an adverse impact” on an historic resource, or “would be contrary to state or federal law.”
San Francisco Planning Director Rich Hillis said the department had received the letter and would respond within 30 days.
“We are working with HCD and the project sponsor to resolve the issues, which may entail reconsideration by the commission of the original project,” he said.
Opposition to the project was led by Thanos Diacakis, a 12-year resident of 18th Street, who argued that one of the rationales for the taller building — that a shorter structure would lack sunlight — was hypocritical.
“You want to create new (places with) sunlight, but at the expense of our sunlight?” he said at the Board of Supervisors meeting last April, as reported by Mission Local.
YIMBY Law founder Sonja Trauss said that the project, while small in scale, had become a “cause celebre” for housing activists.
“It’s tearing down a single family home for six stories of efficiency apartments in a high demand area a block from Dolores Park,” she said. “(The city) felt like its job was to force a compromise rather than say, ‘Well, it’s a code compliant project and we are in a housing shortage, so we can’t help you. Count your blessings and move on.’ ”
Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, who brokered the compromise, could not be reached for comment.