Opinion

Vote for middle-class housing - vote no on Prop B

Freddie Carter (left) and Neil Oosterbaan, superintendents for construction firm James E. Roberts-Obayashi Corp. look out over a new development being built at Hunters Point. Freddie Carter (left) and Neil Oosterbaan, superintendents for construction firm James E. Roberts-Obayashi Corp. look out over a new development being built at Hunters Point. Photo: Tim Hussin, Special To The Chronicle Photo: Tim Hussin, Special To The Chronicle Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Vote for middle-class housing - vote no on Prop B 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

If you think it is hard to find middle-class housing now, just wait and see what will happen if a citywide vote is necessary to build thousands of new homes.

That's what Proposition B will do - slow the production of thousands of desperately needed new housing units by requiring a citywide vote on many of these proposed projects. And that's not even the worst of it. Once you take a closer look at Proposition B, you will be surprised by the giant loopholes that will remove key environmental protections and eliminate required, developer-funded contributions to transit, parks, housing and schools.

Right now, developers must study nearly all major projects with an environmental impact report and then mitigate any problems found. But if they have decent lawyers, they can write ballot measures that remove the need to address any negative findings. That is worth repeating - environmental mitigations are not required if voters directly approve a plan at the ballot box. You can look that up for yourself in the Planning Department's letter to the Department of Elections, available at http://bit.ly/1sYhj1O.

Developers must negotiate with the city directly before winning approval of a project. It is the city's job to make sure developers fund the necessary improvements to serve new residents and to avoid negative impacts on existing residents. As they should, planners take a citywide perspective - thinking about overall issues like the need for new transit, or a new school or more open space.

Under Proposition B, developers will negotiate at the ballot box with voters - and there is no guarantee that voters will "cut a better deal" than the professional planners. Right now, the scope of Proposition B is limited to areas in a few northern and eastern neighborhoods. However, we need to understand that we are establishing a precedent with this vote. Other neighborhoods might follow this precedent if Proposition B is adopted. Do you think Noe Valley, the Sunset, the Richmond, the Excelsior or any other neighborhood would welcome more than its fair share of new housing to protect the few neighborhoods along the waterfront?

A vote of the people sounds good - at first.

But does less middle-class housing sound good? Do you like the idea of exempting developers from the requirement of reviewing the environmental impact of their projects? Do you want to vote on dozens, potentially hundreds, of measures each election cycle? That will make political consultants richer, but the rest of us will pay the price.

Groups that have taken a very close look - like the San Francisco Democratic Party, the Noe Valley Democratic Club, the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club, SPUR, the Building & Construction Trades Council, San Francisco Labor Council and others - agree that we should vote no on Proposition B.

We need new middle-class housing in San Francisco, as well as the protections provided by the environmental review process and the developer-funded mitigations that make this new housing workable. Proposition B means less housing for the middle class, fewer environmental protections and no requirements to fund new parks, transit, housing or schools.