Can Market & Van Ness handle 400 extra parking spaces?

Board of Supervisors proposal would continue to allow excess parking for large condo towers in “the Hub.”

Plans for “the Hub” envision 10,000 new housing units in towers up to 400'.

UPDATE 11/6/17, 7pm: Supervisor Breed said she wanted to amend the interim controls in response to feedback they’ve heard. She continued the interim controls to the “call of the chair,” meaning it will be rescheduled at a date TBD, to give the City Attorney time to work on the amendments.

ORIGINAL POST: In September, Supervisor London Breed facilitated a promising compromise between the developers of the One Oak condo project and Hayes Valley neighbors concerned about its impacts on the City’s transportation network. The most substantive piece of the deal was interim zoning controls introduced by Supervisor Breed that would limit parking in future projects in “the Hub,” the area around Market and Van Ness where the City plans to allow up to 10,000 new housing units.

The interim controls would limit new developments to one parking space for every four housing units. Currently, they can apply for a Conditional Use permit to double the amount of parking.

Unfortunately, on Monday, the Board of Supervisors’ Land Use committee will consider a version of these interim controls that includes an exemption that would allow developers to build significantly more parking. The interim controls would not apply to projects with on-site affordable housing.

Here are my tl;dr reasons why this is a bad policy:

These interim controls won’t apply to any of the pending projects We shouldn’t have to choose between affordable housing and transit-friendly development The current zoning creates uncertainty for developers and the public Projects with on-site affordable housing need less parking

The Market and Van Ness area truly is the hub of San Francisco’s transportation network. Van Ness will soon become our first Bus Rapid Transit line. Market Street is the backbone of the City’s bike network. Van Ness already grinds to a halt every rush hour. If we are going to successfully add ten thousand new households to this area, they need to be overwhelmingly car-free households.

Here is more detail on why these interim controls should apply to projects with on-site affordable housing:

1. These interim controls won’t apply to any of the pending projects in the Hub

I made this spreadsheet with information I could find on the five projects in the Hub with pending applications. All three of the projects that are seeking Conditional Use (CU) permits for extra parking plan to provide on-site affordable housing.

That means these interim controls won’t apply to any of the pending projects! They won’t create an incentive for any of them to incorporate on-site affordable housing, and they won’t incentivize any of them to reduce it’s parking.

If all three of these proposed projects are granted their CUs, that will lead to an extra 400 off-street parking spaces in one of the most transit-friendly neighborhoods in the City.

2. We shouldn’t have to choose between affordable housing and transit-friendly development

It is counterproductive to force the public and policy makers to choose between supporting on-site affordable housing and transit friendly developments with less parking. We need to simultaneously increase the density of our City, promote economic diversity, and limit new car parking — especially in transit-rich areas like the Hub.

If we want to create incentives for developers to provide on-site affordable housing, there must be better alternatives to allowing extra parking.

3. The current zoning creates uncertainty for developers and the public

One of the mantras of the recent housing debates has been that developers hate uncertainty. The fierce debate over the One Oak project’s extra parking showed how the current zoning in the Hub creates intense uncertainty.

Transit advocates look at the zoning and expect projects to comply with the 0.25 housing-to-parking ratio that is allowed by-right. Developers expect they will be granted a CU permit to build a 0.5 ratio.

Developers face many layers of uncertainty when seeking this extra parking: will the Planning Commission approve their CU? Will their CU or Environmental Impact Report be appealed to the Board of Supervisors? Will they face a lawsuit?

Exempting projects with on-site affordable housing from these interim controls won’t settle this debate. It will lead to this debate about parking being rehashed every time a new project applies for a CU.

4. Projects with on-site affordable housing need less parking

There is no policy reason why projects with on-site affordable housing should have more parking. 100% affordable housing developments almost never have parking, because their residents are much less likely to have cars. That means projects with on-site affordable housing have less demand for parking than purely market-rate projects.

Consider the 10 S. Van Ness project. If 18% of its 984 units were affordable, the ratio of market-rate-housing-to-parking would be 0.64. There is no need for 64% of these new households at the corner of Market and Van Ness to have their own parking space.

For all of these reasons, this exemption is bad policy. If we are going to ambitiously increase the density in the Hub, we need to be equally ambitious in limiting the number of new cars in this already-congested neighborhood.

Please contact the Board of Supervisors and ask them to delete the exemption for on-site affordable housing in the interim controls for parking in the Hub (file #17105).