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Home Featured The Agenda, Feb. 26-March 5: What’s still wild in SF …

The Agenda, Feb. 26-March 5: What’s still wild in SF …

... and why are housing prices so high? There's data on that, and it may surprise you

There's something nice about overgrown trails

Glen Canyon Park is one of my favorite places in the city. It’s right in the middle of the third-densest urban area in the US – and five minutes into the park trials, you can almost forget that you’re in a city. For years, my kids and our dog went exploring there – and one of the nice things about it was that “exploring” was an actual possibility. There are blackberry thickets. There’s a muddy creek. The trails were long overgrown. To get to this secret place in the way deep park where there was an unauthorized rope swing you had to bushwhack through an obstacle course of overgrown trees.

There's something nice about overgrown trails
There’s something nice about overgrown trails. SF Rec Park photo

It wasn’t by any stretch a wilderness – the vast majority of the trees and plants were imported. Some people say that parks are gardens, not wild spaces, but much of what I loved about Glen Canyon Park was the fact that it wasn’t terribly well maintained. It actually was a little bit wild.

They are fixing it up now, which is nice – but there are also fences to protect areas that are going to be restored to native vegetation. I like the idea of protecting and preserving native plants; it’s good for people to see and understand what this city looked like before the Europeans got here. We have so totally developed this town – including our parkland, most of which is entire artificial – that we have no sense of what once was.

But native plants are less hardy than the invasive Eucalyptus trees, and you can’t just restore native areas and then let kids and dogs go climb and dig and mess around in them. You have to, at least for a good while, fence them off. You have to tell people to stay on the trails.

There is more of this in the city’s future. A massive natural areas restoration project is underway, and when it’s done, more than 18,000 trees will be cut down, many of them Eucalyptus. I like the sight and smell of those trees, but by any stretch, they are an invasive species: They come from Australia, grow quickly, and even excrete a substance that makes it difficult for any other plants to grow around them – although the extent of that is controversial.

Ecologists generally tend to abhor invasive species, which mess with natural systems in sometimes profound and unexpected ways.

On the other hand, the Eucalyptus has been part of San Francisco for more than a century, and we have a pretty good handle on its impacts.

And I am absolutely, totally not a botanist, and have no authority to weigh in on this particular scientific debate.

I can tell you that the SF Forest Alliance is appealing the Natural Areas Plan EIR to the Board of Supes on Tuesday. The Sierra Club Bay Chapter is supporting the appeal.

One of the issues is the use of herbicides: Eucalyptus are tough plants, and if you cut them down, they want to grow back, so you have to treat the trunks with a chemical that kills them. The potential toxicity of that herbicide is beyond my skill sets as well; the appellants say it’s a problem, and the Recreation and Park Department, which is running this program, says it’s fine.

I think the biggest problem here is not the idea of the Natural Areas Program. There will always be some people who don’t want to see exiting non-native landscapes changed to reflect (and give us a sense of) what was here once upon a time, what San Francisco really looked like. (Of course, Before Henry Doelger got his hands on it and created the Sunset in the 1930s and 1940s, a lot of the West Side of San Francisco was still sand dunes. Which was nice, and it would be kinda cool if that was still a huge undeveloped area, and other than the sand fleas it would be a fun part of the city, but I don’t think it’s realistic to go back.)

The big problem is that, after years of what I can only call arrogance and refusal to accept community input, Rec Park is one of the least trusted agencies in the city. It’s too bad: The department is getting better at a lot of things (summer camps for kids are a bargain and well organized) but the privatization, the sucking up to rich people, the use of parks a cash cows, the attack on poor people, and the general disdain for the public that has characterized the administration of Director Phil Ginsburg puts the city in a bad spot.

To buy into the Natural Areas Plan, which I want to buy into, you have to have a certain amount of faith in the people who are going to be running it. And the director of Rec Park has caused much of San Francisco to lose that faith.

The hearing at the BOS starts around 3pm. It will go on a while; people have strong feelings on both sides of this. And while the issue at hand is the adequacy of the EIR, the entire concept of the Natural Areas Plan will be debated.

My kids are old enough now that they don’t want to climb around in the overgrowth, and my poor aging dog has trouble walking, even on a trail. So my days of exploration of the unmaintained and unmanaged wonders of Glen Canyon Park are probably over. But when it becomes a showcase where we all have to stay on the trail and nobody can get scratched up and muddy and lost in the artificial, non-native and yet glorious tangle … I know I’m probably wrong, but I will miss it.

 

The proposal by Sups. Sandra Fewer and Jane Kim to fully fund an immigration team at the Public Defender’s Office is shaping up as one of the key litmus tests for progressives (and people who want to call themselves progressives) this spring. The mayor has resisted the idea, and told me that he wants the issue addressed in the regular budget process. But as we know all too well, the roundups are starting right now, and the need is huge: If you are arrested by ICE and you don’t have a lawyer, you are seven times more likely to be deported.

We’re talking families getting torn apart, communities ravaged, businesses losing valued employees. We’re talking kids not knowing if their parents are going to be there when they get home from school. It’s really scary.

So the plan to fund the PD is back at Budget and Finance Thursday/2. I hear the Mayor’s Office is willing to compromise, maybe, but there’s not a lot of wiggle room here: The PD needs every penny that Fewer and Kim want to allocate.

The hearing starts at 10am.

 

The Planning Commission gets an informational report Thursday/2 on the city’s jobs-housing balance, which sounds like a technocratic issue, and it is, but it’s also one of the single most important policy questions in San Francisco.

I’ve read the presentation materials, and there’s some interesting data:

The Downtown Plan, which has guided planning decisions since 1985 (gee, maybe we should update that?) set the city’s housing goal at 1,000 new units a year. We have exceeded that: The total number of new housing units built is 39,600, and if you include the pipeline of proposed or approved projects, that reaches 64,500 just in the downtown area. Citywide production has been 57,000 units, and 63,600 more are in the planning pipeline.

In other words: It’s not as if San Francisco hasn’t been building housing.

So why do the Yimbys complain? Why have housing costs risen so high? The Planning Department data (which you can read here) offers some interesting perspectives.

For one, here’s a key paragraph (written in plannerese, but we can translate):

The City’s resident population has grown slightly more than its jobs base during this period, adding approximately 23,000 more residents than jobs (186,000 vs 163,000). During this period, a substantial change to the economic profile of the job base occurred, especially since 1990, with substantial growth in high wage jobs in absolute numbers and as a share of the City’s jobs. Since 1990, there are 154,000 more workers in households earning over 140% AMI, comprising 51% of SF workers compared to 35% in 1990, while there are 22,000 fewer workers today earning 50-140% AMI.

Translation: There are a lot more people today who live in San Francisco and work somewhere else. That’s the result of Peninsula cities approving huge amounts of tech office space and refusing to build any housing at all. It’s also the result of San Francisco allowing tech shuttles to make it easier and far cheaper for workers who live her to commute elsewhere.

The Google buses are free. If the people who live her and work on the Peninsula had to pay to commute, but in wasted time and cash for gas or Caltrain, it might motivate them to move closer to work.

Instead, we have made it easy for giant corporations like Apple and Google, and the rich towns where they operate, to outsource their housing problems to San Francisco.

There are also a lot more high-wage earners living in the city – although there are not a lot more high-wage jobs in the city. Again, from Planning:

The percentage of San Francisco workers in all income brackets less than 140% AMI who live in San Francisco declined since 1990, with the greatest declines at lowest brackets. This means that San Francisco’s housing stock is increasingly being occupied by a greater share of its higher wage workforce, and its middle and lower wage workforce is increasingly commuting into the City.

More:

As the historical regional job center, San Francisco had the highest ratio of jobs-to-housing units in the Bay Area in 1980 (1.75) and continues to do so today (1.73), though the margin of difference from other counties has declined. San Francisco is the only Bay Area county to have a lower jobs-housing ratio now than it did in 1980 (albeit marginally so). Since 1980 all other Bay Area counties have added more jobs per added housing unit than was their situation in 1980, some dramatically so. This is due to not just robust job growth in these counties but to a dramatic slowdown in housing production there relative to earlier decades, particularly in San Mateo county, Santa Clara county, and other inner East Bay communities. In contrast, San Francisco has seen increased housing production each successive decade since the 1970s. San Mateo County added a staggering 3.18 jobs per added housing unit over this 35-year period.

Think about that: San Mateo County created three jobs for every housing unit build. Where are those workers living? Guess.

As usual, the Planning Department reports are heavy on jargon and charts and not that easy to read unless you are as sick as me and love this stuff. But the bottom line is pretty easy to figure out:

The “workforce” in San Francisco has shifted from industrial to what the planners call “office and service” areas, but the biggest employers in the city do not pay wages that allow their workers to live in the city. The biggest industries in SF are government, health care, and hospitality. Many of those jobs are middle-class or working-class, and housing is out of reach for them.

So those workers commute, longer and longer distances. They lose hours of every day in transit, and pay significant amounts of their lower income to get to work – while people who work at tech companies on the Peninsula can afford to live where they don’t work, and keep their take-home pay since their transit is free. That drives up housing prices even more. (It costs $9.30 a day to travel round trip from Richmond to Civic Center. That’s $201 a month – money you can’t pay for rent or food. If you work for Google and get a ride free, you keep that money – or actually, your landlord gets it, which is why housing prices near Google bus stops have gone up so much.)

Meanwhile, the cities on the Peninsula that get tax dollars from hosting tech companies refuse to build any workforce housing. San Mateo creates three jobs for every housing unit (and the Yimby’s are complaining about San Francisco?)

It wasn’t the Invisible Hand of Adam Smith that built tech offices in Cupertino and Mountain View and created tax breaks for tech firms in Mid Market, San Francisco. Those were political decisions made by elected officials who decided that they wanted massive, fast growth in jobs, high-paying jobs (which create a demand for lower paid service jobs), many of which didn’t go to existing residents but to new arrivals who could out-bid existing residents for housing. And they shake their heads now and wonder why there is so much displacement.

And the justifiably frustrated people who just want a place to live in SF demand that the city build more housing – without ever looking at the question of growth inducement. You can’t just attract hundreds of thousands of new jobs without first making sure that you stabilize existing vulnerable communities and then provide housing for the new arrivals.

I said “first.” That means before you build an Apple Spaceship in Cupertino or give a Twitter tax break you make sure there will be room for the newcomers to live without forcing someone who makes less money to leave.

.

The brilliant architect and sustainability planner Sim Van Der Ryn once asked me the question nobody wants to talk about in modern capitalism: “Why do we need a perpetually adolescent economy?” Why is Growth always good? Why not create sustainable jobs with the resources we have in place for the people who live here now and are unemployed instead of trying to make everything bigger all the time?

I suppose that’s a radical idea. It seems so simple.

Here’s City Planning’s total copout, the kind of shit that makes me want to pull out the small amount of hair I still have left:

Ultimately, the construct of a “jobs -housing balance” is a function of transportation system dynamics and must be considered at a sufficiently broad geographic lens, most practically at a regional and multi-city scale, particularly in a complex region such as the Bay Area, and not particularly relevant at a neighborhood or development site scale.

No: That’s completely wrong. Jobs-housing balance is and has to be a part of every single planning decision we make, at every level. When you talk about building housing, you can’t just let the private market make the call: The private market provides only housing for the very rich, because that’s where the return on speculative investment is. If new housing doesn’t work for the existing workforce, the people who keep the city running in its most important industries, then it’s not helping. And it never will.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

15 COMMENTS

  1. San Francisco (The City & County) isn’t actually “providing the housing”, it’s just being built here. Those Peninsula cities actually restrict the building by quite a bit to maintain what they like as their quality of life – you’re not going to find large apartment buildings in the Emerald Lakes area of Redwood City for instance.

    Moreover, quality of life is dependent upon where in the city one is – the Tenderloin isn’t going to the Richmond, no matter how many people live there, or how dense it becomes.

  2. Somehow taking down 18,000 trees & replacing them ALL with “native” trees and poisoning the Eucalyptuses sounds like a disaster. But SF still goes along with their disastrous plans. All I can say is TG for SV, because without it, SF would be Baltimore or Detroit at this point.

  3. The Bay Area has several cities. San Jose has a larger population. There are 610,771 people who work in SF. Twice that number, 1,246,249 work down the peninsula. Where would you put everyone. And that does not count the nearly 1 million who work in the Eastbay.

  4. You are correct. Obviously the SF can’t force other cities to do anything. I simply object to SF providing housing for businesses down the peninsula. I am generally opposed to overbuilding SF if it harms our quality of life. But I don’t object to more density on the Eastside as it takes pressure off my backyard. And there may be some areas like along commercial strips on the Westside that wouldn’t be hurt to have a little more density.

  5. YIMBYs have been going to South and East Bay Planning meetings for years to complain about their NIMBYism. They literally started a group to Sue The Suburbs.

    Also way to bury the fact that SFs jobs to housing imbalance still demonstrates that we’re underproducing housing

  6. No doubt we should insist that more housing is built down the peninsula before the City considers any major changes to increase our density.

    How would that be accomplished? Upon whom would we insist they (Peninsula cities) build housing? Why should SF housing / commercial / retail density be contingent upon what other cities do or don’t do?

  7. Because the city is largely covered in rowhouses. Yes Silicon Valley hasn’t been building its share, but San Francisco is a “city”, not a suburb. Silicon Valley shouldn’t even exist to begin with, those jobs should’ve been in Downtown SF and those workers housed with everyone else in the city.

    Nobody is advocating to take away your park. Just build denser housing everywhere in the Bay, but especially in “the.city”.

  8. The purpose of a City is not to support biodiversity. It is a place for people to live. And most people do not visit City parks for biodiversity but for recreation. I don’t know anyone to says “lets to to the park to see biodiversity.”

    I read the full Sax study. There are many uncontrolled variables (such as age of the forest) and it has not been replicated. But it does show there is not a significant difference in biodiversity. It also cities other papers. Where is the evidence that natives support more biodiversity? I know that is the conventional wisdom. One conclusion from the Sax study is that a mixed species forest would have the greatest biodiversity if that is important.

    I was agreeing that Eucalyptus can be a fire danger, as bad as Ponderosa Pine. All forests, especially if overgrown, can be a fire danger. In the City, the Eucalyptus fire danger would be very low if the forest was maintained. Native brush on San Bruno is also a fire hazard since they stopped doing controlled burns. The NAP replacing trees with brush can be a disaster if not maintained.

    Regarding birds in Eucalyptus here is another cite:

    ftp://ftp.aphis.usda.gov/foia/FOLDER%203/AR00028634%20Suddjian%202004%20Birds%20and%20EUcs.pdf

  9. The purpose of EVERYTHING is to support diversity. I know you’re quoting from Dov Sax’s study (a cursory Google search brings it up) but I’d caution you to read the study in full – it doesn’t support the conclusion you’re saying it does. And Ponderosa Pine do not grow in the Bay Area.

  10. The purpose of a City park is not to support diversity. It is to support people. In case, there is no evidence that non-native forests support more diversity than native forests. A study was done comparing Eucalyptus to an Oak Forest found no significant difference. The sap killing short beak birds is also not supported by the evidence.

    Eucalyptus may be more of a fire problem than other species, maybe as bad as native Ponderosa Pine. However, all forest can have a catastrophic fire. Native brush can be just as bad if not maintained. If you look at the major wildfires we had last year they were native forests, not eucalyptus forests. With proper maintenance, the fire danger can be minimized. The money for the Natural Areas Program can be better spent maintaining the forest. With our cool moist climate and a good fire department that has easy access to our parks, the fire danger is minimal if the forest is maintained.

  11. No doubt we should insist that more housing is built down the peninsula before the City considers any major changes to increase our density. However, that may not make all that much difference in our housing prices.

    The profile of the job base has been changing for 50 years. It is not a recent phenomenon. And of course, this raises the price of housing. Nor is the number of those who reverse
    commute anything new, it has been happening for over 40 years. I am not sure the rate of change has increased in recent years since the introduction of Google buses. Reverse commuters caused the shuttles, shuttles did not cause reverse commuters. In the past decade, the percent of reverse commuters has increased from 38 to 40 percent; most of that down the peninsula.

    I am skeptical that the middle and lower wage workforce is increasingly commuting into the City any more than higher wage workers are increasingly commuting into the City. The lowest wage workers are less likely to commute than the higher wage workers; 56.9% of lowest wage workers commute compared to 63.7% of higher wage workers that commute. However, it may be that the percent of lower wage commuters has increase more than higher wage workers. But those data don’t really measure the very high wage workers. The very high wage workers also get more house and space for their money outside of the City; with the possible exception of some peninsula cities. Look where corporate executives live. You will find them in cities such as Atherton and Belvedere.

    One does not need to guess about San Mateo County. The number who live in SF and work in San Mateo has increased by only 1,000 in the past decade. But those who live in San Mateo but work in SF has increased by 15,000 during the same period.

    Regarding longer commutes, low income people do make longer commutes than average. But that is true for most Bay Area cities with more affordable housing. A higher percent of workers
    make longer commutes to Vacaville, Santa Rosa, Vallejo, San Leandro, Petaluma, Concord, and San Ramon compared to San Francisco.

  12. One major problem with non-native plants is that they do not support a diversity of animal and insect species in the way natives do. Eucalyptus create a monoculture, as do Himalayan blackberries. Eucalyptus are also terrible on avian species, they emit a sap that seals bird beaks shut and it can’t be removed without breaking the bird’s beak. Lastly, eucs are absolutely atrocious when it comes to fire. The Oakland Hills fire was primarily spread by eucalyptus. Fire fighters call them “firecracker trees” because they literally explode when on fire – spreading burning shrapnel everywhere.

  13. I also played in the wilderness of Glenn Park as a child. Park and Rec would bus us from the Inner Richmond to day camps there. Taking away play areas from children is a crime. Urban Parks are for people not plants.

    I have no problem turning over some limited areas of the Parks to those who enjoy a native garden. However, those gardens are not cost effective and require a lot of labor to maintain. They are Native Gardens are not “Natural” Areas. Humans have been altering the landscape for thousands of years. It is almost impossible to find a “natural” area anywhere in California.

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