Posted Feb 3, 2022, 6:26 PM
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Join Date: Dec 2016
Location: San Francisco
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Quote:
YIMBY sues San Francisco over controversial group housing project
By Laura Waxmann – Staff Reporter, San Francisco Business Times
Jan 20, 2022 Updated Jan 21, 2022, 12:04pm PST
After the state’s housing department launched an investigation late last year into San Francisco's decision to overturn the approval of a Tenderloin group housing project, another party has gotten involved in the housing squabble.
Yes In My Back Yard, a nonprofit known as YIMBY whose mission is to enforce state housing laws, is suing San Francisco and its Board of Supervisors for upholding an appeal of the Planning Commission's approval of a group housing project at 450 O’Farrell St.
The lawsuit, filed in the Superior Court of California on Dec. 30, claims that the board’s decision violated the state’s Housing Accountability Act, which curtails the ability of local governments to deny qualifying market-rate and affordable housing projects. It is seeking an order overturning the decision to uphold the appeal, forcing the city to deem the 450 O’Farrell project compliant with applicable zoning and design standards and requiring the city to approve it.
YIMBY Director Sonja Trauss told me Thursday that the lawsuit was not filed in conjunction with or on behalf of the developer Forge Development . . . .
Forge President Richard Hannum, who as recently as December threatened to pursue its own legal action if the city failed to negotiate with his team, said he now has a “different plan.”
“There’s no need for us to also pursue legal action in state court,” he told me Thursday.
Hannum said he is now working with the city’s Planning Department to again reconfigure the project.
Also named in the lawsuit are the organizations that appealed 450 O’Farrell — the Tenderloin Housing Clinic and Pacific Bay Inn Inc. — although YIMBY is not seeking relief against these parties . . . .
Those following the 450 O’Farrell saga know that the project was — with some reluctance — approved by the Planning Commission with a 4-2 vote in June, after multiple hearings on the project were delayed.
The project stirred controversy in the Tenderloin — a largely working-class neighborhood that already is home to a majority of the city’s single room occupancy hotels — after Forge Development pivoted last January from an already approved 176-unit traditional housing project to 316 group housing units. Amending the approved project required a conditional use authorization.
Forge, which is partnering with the site’s owner, the Fifth Church of Christ Scientist, plans to build a replacement church as part of the project, has maintained that the change to the more smaller units was made to provide more affordable housing to middle-income households in the neighborhood.
But neighborhood advocates and local affordable housing developer TNDC were less than thrilled with the change, countering that the new project missed the mark on meeting the neighborhood's biggest need — affordable housing for families.
Soon after the project was approved, TNDC and the Pacific Bay Inn, a residential hotel serving homeless adults adjacent to 450 O’Farrell, filed an appeal of the Planning Commission's decision to allow Forge to pivot to group housing units with the Board of Supervisors.
During the Oct. 5 appeal hearing, District 6 Supervisor Matt Haney, whose district includes the neighborhood, described the original project as more compatible with the neighborhood's needs, while District 3 Supervisor Aaron Peskin described the group housing iteration as “tech dorms,” per the lawsuit.
The controversy over whether or not group housing does in fact meet the city’s housing needs inspired Peskin to introduce two ordinances in December to limit and further regulate group housing amid a proliferation of such proposals for smaller residential units. Read more on that here.
The lawsuit states that the board found, among other things, that the project would fail to meet the needs of families due to the size of the units — proposed between 350 and 850 square feet — and lack of full kitchen facilities in the units, and counters that current Planning Code “expressly authorizes group housing at the project site as a principally permitted use” and also defines group housing as units without full kitchens.
“The board’s action clearly violates state housing law. The findings did not identify any applicable, objective general plan and zoning standards and criteria that the Project failed to meet,” the lawsuit states. “Rather, the board disapproved the project based on vague, subjective, and prohibited ‘neighborhood compatibility’ grounds.”
Trauss said the HAA was strengthened by the 2019 Senate Bill 330, which among other things limited jurisdictions from changing development standards and zoning applicable to a project after an application is submitted and prohibited cities and counties from holding more than five hearings if the proposed residential project complies with current applicable, objective general plan and zoning standards.
“The thing about the conditional use process is that it's not objective,” said Trauss . . . .
Regarding the 450 O'Farrell project, Hannum said the company is working on an alternative design that is a “smaller project with less housing,” and is no longer pursuing group housing. He added that his goal with the project is to “build this church.”
“We are not deviating from that mission and we are also not giving up,” he said.
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https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfranc...g-project.html
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