by Peter Cohen and Fernando Martí

The future of a huge swath of The City is currently up for grabs, and with it, the future of San Francisco’s approach to affordable housing.

The Public Utilities Commission parking lot next to the City College of San Francisco’s campus on Ocean Avenue may not seem exciting, but it is 17 acres of developable land in our mostly built-out city, and market-rate developers are salivating at the prospect of privatizing this land.

As publically owned land, the Balboa Reservoir represents an indispensable public resource that should be preserved as a public good for this and future generations. This will require not only a commitment of resources, but also visionary leadership by The City, which we have yet to see.

Any “Request for Proposals,” or Board of Supervisors-approved rezoning or development agreement for residential uses on the site, should prioritize maximum housing affordability, at a minimum mandating that at least 50 percent of the site be affordable to low-income households (families earning less than $50,000), and on top of that another portion affordable to moderate-income families (two-earner households earning up to $120,000). And it should do that while still supporting City College’s continued viability by dedicating parking facilities for a fully enrolled CCSF and providing new open space.

The PUC’s Citizens Advisory Committee agrees: Last March, it passed a resolution calling for 50 percent to 100 percent of housing developed on the site to be affordable, for a range of incomes and family sizes, to truly meet the needs of San Franciscans.

The Mayor’s Office of Economic Development, however, argues the best approach for a large 17-acre site like this, even if it is publicly owned, is to privatize it as much as possible. Any affordable units, they argue, should be entirely dependent on market-rate developers willing to “cross-subsidize” some small amount. And most of these so-called affordable units could end up being studios and 1-bedrooms — only affordable to individuals who earn more than $100,000 (140-150 percent of median income). These are called “creative financing” solutions.

The logical and frightening conclusion of The City’s argument for privatizing Balboa Reservoir is that we would never need to invest in affordable housing again — simply let the paltry amount of affordable units we are able to leverage out of “the market” produce all our affordable housing from now on. These are the same arguments that lead to privatizing public schools and community colleges or contracting out critical public services to the lowest bidder. These are the classic arguments of austerity and neoliberalism, based on a model of scarcity of resources that hardly has a base in San Francisco’s booming economy.

Ideology aside, the problem with this model, practical as it may sound, is that it simply continues to exacerbate the imbalance of high-end market-rate housing (the latest numbers are that only 11 percent of The City’s residents can afford the median cost home) compared to housing for the everyday working and middle-class San Franciscans. And according to The City’s own Housing Element goals through 2022, we have already built or entitled more than 106 percent of our market-rate housing goals, and met only 24 percent of our low-income and 13 percent of our moderate-income needs!

We are always playing a game of catch-up with the overproduction of luxury housing.

It is indeed possible to develop the Balboa Reservoir with 100 percent affordable housing and amenities for the neighboring community and City College. And certainly it is without question possible to develop it with a minimum of 50 percent to 60 percent affordable as we suggested above. It is primarily a question of available funds and phasing. A back of the envelope calculation envisions a total city investment of around $100 million for a 250-to-300-unit affordable development — held in the public trust in perpetuity. This would include compensating PUC ratepayers with a fair-market value for the “unserviced” land (subtracting the cost of needed infrastructure such as streets and sewers).

The City argues we don’t have that kind of money lying around, and even much of the Prop A funds from last November are already being dedicated to new affordable housing elsewhere in The City. This would clearly be a major city investment, spread out in phases, but given the willingness shown by voters over the last decade to support funding for affordable housing, such numbers do not appear to be insurmountable, and the payoff would last for generations.

Some say only by relying on market-rate development can we be reasonably assured that development will happen sooner rather than later. This is simply not true. In fact, city-funded development is more stable and reliable than market-drive development. Large market-rate projects rely on the ups-and-downs of the global market of institutional investors, which quickly dry up at the slightest change in the economy. On the other hand, in the downs of the market, it is often only city investment that moves projects forward. In fact, during the Great Recession in 2010, more than 50 percent of the units completed in San Francisco were publicly financed affordable housing.

The model of Octavia Avenue is a perfect case in point: A huge swath of public land (from the Central Freeway teardown) was divided into parcels, and fully half of the new units were dedicated to affordable housing. Most of those parcels are now built out, and everyone agrees the development along Octavia Avenue is wildly successful. It took vision, leadership and perseverance, but public lands are being used exactly as was envisioned by the public.

It is not a question of feasibility or funding that is holding us back, but a lack of bold leadership that truly attempts to face the housing crisis head-on. A short-term trade-off for a handful of privately financed affordable units for people earning $100,000 at Balboa Reservoir is not visionary. A truly visionary plan would seize this rare opportunity with a longer-term strategy that leverages hundreds of affordable units from this major public resource.

On Monday, the Balboa Reservoir CAC will discuss development parameters for the site. Supervisor Norman Yee has requested that the CAC consider a proposal to mandate 50 percent of all housing on the site to be affordable (and the definition of “affordable,” and affordable for whom, is critical). And on Tuesday, the PUC will take their CAC’s resolution regarding affordability and uses for the site into consideration.
Our elected leaders, commissioners and city bureaucracy would do well to begin with a philosophy that prioritizes and preserves public resources for the public good in perpetuity.

(Peter Cohen and Fernando Martí are co-directors of San Francisco’s Council of Community Housing Organizations).

by Jon Rappoport

“The mind has no obligation to be a container.” (The Underground, Jon Rappoport)

ONE: The elite men who manipulate the masses do stand outside The Collective, but they’re not free. Their only power comes from diminishing the power of others.
They don’t know any other kind of power.
The idea that, within themselves, as individuals, they have creative fire is completely and utterly foreign to them.

TWO: Every major covert op has the same concealed objective: “defeat the enemy and thereby gain more control.”
But control over what?
Beyond the usual answers, the root answer is: “control over the mind.”
Why? Because if perception and thought can be channeled, directed, reduced, and weakened, then it doesn’t matter what humans do to resist other types of control. They will always go down the wrong path. They will always operate within limited and bounded territory. They will always ignore their own authentic power.
I’m talking about power that exceeds the “normal” and “average” ability to influence the stream of cause and effect.
The “prison” of cause and effect is a concept that is floated as part of the basic covert op to convince people they are small, diminished, and at the mercy of larger forces.
But underneath it all, humans have the capacity to “jump the chain” and become, as it were, “first causes.”
And not in some minor way.
Unfortunately, the popular view of how this can be accomplished is often rooted in New Age notions: the instantaneous fix; the Disneyesque manifestation; the “surrender to the universe.”
These are psy-op versions of the real thing, floated as part of the overall covert op to engage the gullible among us.
“Jumping the chain” is actually a matter of reversing the op. In other words, instead of accepting the mural of reality that has been created for us, each person creates his own.
Without compromise.
Beyond the covert op, every human has the capacity to act in ways that change the flow of time, the architecture of space, and the sources of energy.
The degree to which an individual believes this is impossible mirrors his acceptance of the basic covert op on planet Earth.

THREE: When people speak about “hope for all of us,” they rarely refer to the power of the individual.
That’s because they are blinded by the Group. They have no other option.
They’re looking through the lens of the collective.
They judge their work solely by the effect it has on others, and they judge themselves solely by the effect others have on them.

FOUR: When the individual sets a goal that is outside the consensus and the status quo, he himself is outside the consensus.
The degree of organization he creates, in order to achieve the goal, doesn’t have to be traditional, symmetrical, balanced. Organization should be a function of the actions that will achieve the goal. The actions should dictate the organization.

FIVE: Freedom means the individual can change his mind at any moment. It also means that, if he doesn’t change his mind, and instead follows a straight path, he is going to have to keep referring back to the original vision that gave birth to the enterprise he’s engaged in. He’s going to have to keep inspiring himself in that way. Otherwise, his energy will stagnate. He will become less important than the pattern.

SIX: Storyline, when applied to a person’s life, makes no sense unless he is inventing it. Otherwise, it’s random, and the only forward motion is like something a machine would produce as it grinds ahead.

SEVEN: Many people are slaves of pattern. They believe if they do A, they should then do B, and then C. They see no other options. It makes sense to them to follow pattern. But the pattern doesn’t lead to a desired outcome. It just circles around and puts a person back where he started from.

EIGHT: If “things as they are” has any life at all, it comes from anticipating that imagination is going to transform it.
NINE: So-called Enlightenment isn’t a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. It’s the result of the individual freely creating new realities.
Jon Rappoport is the author of three explosive collections, The Matrix Revealed, Exit From The Matrix, And Power Outside The Matrix.