The San Francisco Planning Commission voted 4-2 today, with all of the mayoral appointees in approval, to allow the private San Francisco Golf Club to build an industrial maintenance facility 40 feet from a preschool on Brotherhood Way.
More than a dozen speakers opposed the project, saying the materials stored on the site, including lithium-ion batteries, were a fire hazard and that the construction debris, including airborne particulates, would be hazardous to the young students.
Several parents said their kids already had problems with asthma. The preschool students spend a lot of their day outside, in a small playground close to the project site.
Commission President Lydia So noted that the workers at the club need a new indoor spot for their lockers and a place to eat lunch and take breaks. The golf course also has what’s described in reviews as a first-class club house—but the workers aren’t allowed to use that, only paying members.
As numerous speakers put it, the city’s priorities should be safety first—and the cost of the project second. “The safety of our children is more important than the pleasure of billionaires,” one said. “The members don’t want this to be an eyesore for the golfers,” which is why it’s planned for the corner of the property, not closer to the area where people play.
In an October hearing, the commissioners directed the club to explore alternative locations. Representatives of the club said that there’s nowhere else on the 150-acre site that the 19,000-squre-foot building would work without extensive, and expensive, sewage and electrical upgrades.
Commissioner Gilbert Williams said that the efforts to find an alternative were not adequate, and “the safety of children will always be my main concern.”
Commissioner Kathrin Moore also said that her concerns “have not been alleviated.” While the developer agreed to move the building from 20 to 40 feet from the preschool and associated Thomas More K-8 facility, “it is not fundamentally changed, not enough that I can say everything is okay.”
The other commissioners all said they wanted to keep kids safe, too—but in the end, they voted in favor of the project.
The commission also voted to endorse legislation by Sup. Joel Engardio that would allow some residential property owners to build additional dwelling units on their lots and sell them as condos.
That’s at best a tricky concept: One of the arguments for ADUs is that they bring housing prices down, and are often rented at (somewhat) affordable rates. (Engardio and others of the Yimby persuasion call the “naturally affordable.” The city currently allows homeowners and landlords to build ADUs on an expedited basis if they agree to accept rent control.
But condos are by law exempt from all rent control, since they are technically single-family homes.
And, as the planning staff pointed out in a report,
Without limits on which units can be converted to condos through this program, rent-controlled tenants may face greater displacement pressure, and units designed to be rent-controlled may lose their rent-controlled status. The city needs to ensure any new program that increases development potential does so without increasing housing insecurity. Rent-controlled units are vital for communities of color, who are most affected by displacement and benefit greatly from rent control protections. Eliminating these units through condo conversions would harm these communities. To protect the city’s rent-controlled housing stock, limits should be placed on which units can undergo condo conversion through this program. This will help preserve affordable and stable housing options.
Among other things, an existing tenant in an ADU converted to a condo could be evicted easily under an owner move-in eviction—and potentially, thousands of units that are currently illegal but still subject to rent control could be lost.
That’s why Mitchell Omerberg, director of the Affordable Housing Alliance and a tenant advocate for more than 40 years, told the commission that his group was strongly opposed to the measure.
The staff suggested limiting the program to existing single-family homes and existing condos that are proposing to construct a new ADU, and new construction of single-family homes and condos that want to add an ADU.
That would protect existing tenants. Engardio said he was willing to accept those changes; we will see if they are included when the bill goes the Board of Supes.
But Moore had another concern: She asked Engardio to stop referring to ADUs as “affordable by design.” Most housing construction in the US, Moore, who is an architect, said, now uses lumber from Canada, Japan, and other countries that are now subject to high Trump tariffs. The costs of construction are going to rise dramatically.
“The sheer cost, insurance, fees … there is an optimism in the market that is not warranted.”
In other words: The market is not going to provide anything but very expensive housing any time in the near future.
