Attempts to Place Rent Board and Affordable Housing Measures on November Ballot Fail

From the SF Realtor Advantage Online for August 3, 2010:


Two proposed measures that seemed destined to appear on the San Francisco municipal ballot in November, both of which were opposed by the San Francisco Association of REALTORS®, failed to receive the support necessary to make it.

The first was a Charter amendment proposed by Supervisor David Campos (formerly a deputy city attorney for the City and County of San Francisco, later, general counsel to the San Francisco Unified School District, and currently, a supervisor representing District 9) to change the composition of the city’s Rent Board to weight it in favor of tenants.

Currently, the mayor appoints the members of the Rent Board to serve four-year terms. The board consists of two tenants, two landlords and a neutral member who is neither a tenant nor a landlord and who owns no rental property. The members serve at the pleasure of the mayor.

Under Campos’ proposed Charter amendment, the Rent Board would consist of three tenants, two landlords and two neutral members. The Board of Supervisors would be authorized to appoint three members (one tenant, one landlord and one neutral), the mayor to appoint three members (one tenant, one landlord and one neutral) and the Board of Supervisors’ president and the mayor to jointly appoint one tenant member. The Rent Board would be added to the list of commissions whose members are subject to removal only for official misconduct.

The second was a Charter amendment proposed by Supervisor Chris Daly (representing District 6) to require the diversion of city funds to affordable housing projects in San Francisco.

Daly’s proposed Charter amendment, if approved by the voters, would have mandated that the city EVERY YEAR for 15 years spend 33 percent of every budget surplus on housing projects—NOT housing projects for typical San Francisco working class families but projects for a very narrow spectrum of the population.

The amendment’s mandate would take precedence over all other needs—regardless of how critically important those other needs might have been to those who live and work in San Francisco.

www.sfbaywindow.com—One Central Resource Guide for SF Homeowners

The San Francisco Realtor Association’s web site for homeowners, www.sfbaywindow.com, contains more than 130 articles on subjects important to owners. From “Adding a Room” to “Zoning Districts,” it’s all there, making the site the most robust resource guide for San Francisco homeowners on the web.

Want to know more about sidewalk repair? What to do about barking dogs? Confused about who’s responsible for repairing the fence between your backyard and your neighbor’s? Aren’t sure if you need a permit to remodel your bathroom? The answers to all these questions and many more can be found on the Association’s very informative and unique site.

Topics are separated into three easy-to-navigate sub-headings: Your House, Your Neighborhood and Your City.In addition, the site contains a fourth, separate category—Your Government—which provides descriptions of legislative proposals and ballot measures affecting the interests of property owners at the local, State and federal levels.

Sometimes accompanying these descriptions are letters supporting or opposing legislative proposals (as the case might be) that site visitors can send to selected legislators, with their name attached to the letters with a single mouse click. To view the political content, however, you must click on the separate Your Government link.

Visit the site regularly for information on how to make homeownership and living in San Francisco even more rewarding.

San Francisco Homeowners Have New Way to Pay for Going Green

San Francisco homeowners have a new way of paying for solar panels, energy-efficient appliances and low-flow toilets.

A new city-run program, GreenFinanceSF, will give San Franciscans the money to pay for such projects up front and let them pay it back through installments on their property tax bills. Berkeley pioneered the idea in 2007, and since then, hundreds of cities, counties and states have adopted their own versions.

For more details, visit https://greenfinancesf.org/systems/energy.

S.F. Real Estate Rebounding—A Channel 5 News Story

The lead story yesterday on the six o’clock news on Channel 5 (the local CBS affiliate station) was a report by Emmy Award-winning political editor Hank Plante on the rebound in real estate sales that has been noticed recently in San Francisco. The story cited the upsurge in sales that has occurred in the Excelsior district, the Sunnyside district, at the Infinity Towers and many other areas in the city. Plante explained that the driving factors are historically low interest rates, more rational asking prices, the availability of credit and the effects of pent-up demand. The Association which worked on the story with others provided statistical support for what had been observed in the field through Terradatum, the company which provides the Association with reports for publication in REALTOR® Advantage Online.

Click here to view the story.