Eensy Weensy
Net-net: SJ Council's "Housing Day" was a continuation of the city's small-ball approach to a big league crisis.
SJ's woeful inability to allow the development of adequate housing--creating a cascade of affordability and equity ills--is (sadly) old news. So we can be forgiven for hoping that the SJ Council's "Housing Day" this week might've brought some common sense and substantial redirection to the overregulation mindset that has channeled us into these deep waters.
Alas, Tuesday's sail-past--a flotilla of chest-thumping, self-congratulations from the dais (and the de rigeur charges of "fascism" from lefty housing advocates), gave us only minor tweaks to the same old shipwrecked strategies.
Notably:
No reconsideration of SJ's misguided Urban Growth boundary, which forces new development onto more expensive, dense, multi-story buildings on more expensive infill land.
Naive enthusiasm for office-to-residential conversions, failing to take into account the (usually massive) costs of renovating new office buildings to housing, (due to floor plates, design, and structural complexities) as well as budget-busting acquisition costs.
No consideration of more sweeping zoning changes.
Exaggerated claims about the impact of changing fees and inclusionary parameters.
Don't get us wrong--tweaking development-unfriendly fees and regulations are part of the solution, for sure. But only a very minor part, unlikely to have substantial impact by themselves. They may give officials and candidates the chance to say they're "making progress," but that "progress" is really just performative dawdling at the edge of the problem.
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