Quote:
Originally Posted by tyler82
Do they want to put the affordable housing in the tower itself?? For some reason, $1 Billion transit center budget and affordable housing do not add up!
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San Francisco requires at least 12% of new housing to be affordable, I believe (someone will correct me if I've got the percentage off a bit but it doesn't matter--keep reading). That can be on-site or off-site. I did not hear any of these proposals say anything about off-site housing. Pelli/Hines (I'm betting mainly Hines) seems to want to finesse the issue by simply not having any housing. That won't work. Like I said, Daly has already said he doesn't oppose height per se but he wants affordable housing--I'm betting he will not only demand a substantial part of the project be housing but that 20%, perhaps more, of it be affordable. Sorry, Tyler, but that's the reality of SF politics. I think it's crazy too, but it's reality.
If it were up to me, I'd just be content for the city to get a first class transit terminal for the least amount of money and let it go at that. But I'm a hardcore capitalist pig.
One possible out for Hines would be to negotiate a contribution to the city's affordable housing coffers equivalent to the value of the amount of affordable units the city wants and they don't want to build. Then let a non-profit developer actually build them somewhere else. But so far I haven't even heard them offer that. And my impression has always been that Hines in particular gives nothing away--they will resist and if pushed too far they will walk away.
That's just one more reason I'd go with SOM if I were making the decision.