I just got a call from Victor Vallez, a journalism student at USF, who interviewed me briefly about my thoughts on Proposition C, the measure that just passed to build so-called "affordable housing" (in reality to bring back the SF Redevelopment Agency in all but name). He's writing for a class, but may try to get published in the USF newspaper the Foghorn as well.
I encouraged him to research Jim Reid online, and the tiny house he built, to compare what *real* affordable housing would look like with the phony approach of Prop. C, and also suggested that if he was up for some real investigative journalism, that he try to "follow the money" and find out who would really have what authority to spend the money set aside under the measure, who those people are and what their interests are.
They are sort of moving in Jim Reid's direction by authorizing new 220 sf micro apartments here in SF...down from 290 sf at the time Jim Reid was running for mayor. Jim's house was 100 sf
Good argument, Starchild! The way I see it, just forget the mandated sizes of units, and let builders build what folks will buy/rent. Not so sure about Reid's involvement with the homeless solution -- who would be paying for such solutions?
Regarding Wiener's units, I would be totally OK with them, if in my mind they were not so tied to Plan Bay Area.
Thanks Marcy...Reid simply said that if homes were small and genuinely affordable, the housing problem would be greatly alleviated. As a Green there are many aspects to his plan objectionable to Libertarians. However, he said his model could be constructed for $6,500. If you add land costs (high density) and a healthy profit, the units could be easily affordable to people earning less than $12K per year. Whatever the numbers really are, for the truly poor I believe Jim's proposal was that it was cheaper for government to provide this form of housing for the poor and homeless than what it was doing now with Section 8, public housing etc...
During this campaign...the minimum size in SF was 290 sf. Now it is 220 sf...that's still over twice Jim's unit size of 100 sf.