Sup. Chyanne Chen has introduced legislation that would require developers who demolish housing in vulnerable communities replace existing affordable units with new units at the same price.
It’s a pretty basic concept. As Chen noted at a Planning Commission hearing Thursday, a developer who tears down a five-unit building in Chinatown occupied entirely by very-low-income tenants and replaces it with 25 new units would be required only to include three affordable units, and they might not be affordable to the tenants displaces.
Her legislation would require those five units be replaced, at the same rental levels.
It fits in perfectly with the rhetoric we have heard from both Planning and the Board of Supes: Zoning and land-use should include protections for existing vulnerable communities, particularly communities of color. In the Priority Equity Geographies, the city’s term for communities vulnerable to displacement, 69 percent of residents are low-income, and 40 percent are very-low income.
Her bill, Chen said, would “stabilize existing communities.”
It would impact only a small number of sites where existing housing would be demolished.
Planning Department staff urged the commission to reject the concept. It could, planner Veronica Flores said, impact the “missing middle” projects that involve 20 or 30 units, and make them financial infeasible.
The hearing was infuriating and at points just gross. Commissioner Lydia So went out of her way to say that she had met with representatives of the Chinatown Community Development Center, Young Community Developers in the Bayview, and the Mission Economic Development Agency, who support the measure. She praised their “authenticity and thoughtfulness.”
Then she voted to oppose the Chen bill.
The final vote was 5-2, with only commissioners Malea Chavz and Elizabeth Macdonald, both Board of Supes appointees, voting to support the measure.
Chen’s bill now goes to the Board of Supes, which doesn’t have to accept the Planning Commission recommendation. But the planning vote will give the hard-core Yimbys who are willing to allow any new housing no matter who it displaces, forces out of the city, or drives into homelessness, political cover.
