The Board of Supes will consider Tuesday/22 a proposal that would require the city to notify tenants and property owners of any new zoning proposal that would impact them—and it’s going to be close.
Sup. Connie Chan is proposing the legislation, and has four cosponsors. The local Yimbys are against it. Two of the supes on the Land Use and Transportation Committee, Bilal Mahmood and Myrna Melgar, said it was either a bad idea or not necessary. The committee sent it to the full board without recommendation.
The City Planning Department said mailing postcards to everyone who will be impacted by the massive upzoning plan the city is proposing for the West Side would cost at least $200,000. Chan notes that fee waivers and other benefits for developers dwarf that modest price.
The Yimby concern, of course, is that 300,000 people might get a notice in the mail saying that height and density limits in their neighborhoods are about to increase dramatically—and some might organize against it.
But it’s pretty hard to say that neighborhoods shouldn’t be informed about changes that will have a lasting impact on the community.
This will be a litmus test vote: Has the board moved so far to the right that even notifying residents and small businesses about zoning changes is such a threat to the Yimby agenda that it has to be stopped?
That meeting starts at 2pm.
The Public Safety and Neighborhood Services Committee will consider Thursday/24 a measure by Sup. Matt Dorsey that would
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establish the cessation of illicit drug use and attainment of long-term recovery from substance use disorders as the primary objective of the City’s drug policy.
It’s got seven co-sponsors, including all the “moderates” and Sups. Myrna Melgar and Rafael Mandelman. So it will pass.
But there’s a fair amount of pushback, including from doctors at UCSF, who argue that “abstinence only approach to drug use can kill.”
From Mission Local:
“Harm reduction and treatment are part and parcel,” said Dr. Ayesha Appa, a clinician investigator in addiction medicine. She described harm reduction as “one of the most important tools” in her kit.
For instance, she said, one of her patient’s relationships with people offering safer use supplies made him feel valued, and that it would be possible to get on methadone. Since then, he’s been moving forward with recovery.
Dorsey touts the success of some residential treatment programs and AA/NA, which focus on total abstinence. For a lot of people, that approach works. For a lot of others, it doesn’t.
For decades, San Francisco has embraced harm reduction as an important part of its substance-use policy. This was one of the first cities to allow needle exchange. Not long ago, Mandelman strongly backed a state bill that would have allowed San Francisco to open safe-injection sites.
Dorsey’s bill is a big step backward from that approach. It has no immediate practical impact, but it could be used to prevent things like wellness centers, which Dorsey wants to defund in favor of jail-based treatment programs.
And it would underscore the current Lurie Administration approach of arresting anyone selling—or publicly using—drugs that are currently illegal, while encouraging other people to publicly use drugs that are currently legal.
That hearing starts at 10am.
