No on Proposition E
Board of Supervisors anti-housing measure
What is it?
Proposition E is a Charter Amendment introduced by the Board of Supervisors which will maintain much of the status quo around housing permits. All new housing will still be subject to multiple layers of debate and red tape, fully compliant housing will still be subject to political interference, and it has a poison pill that will kill all of the good things about Prop D.
Fiscal impacts
Like Prop D, Prop E will not cost the city any extra money. However, by maintaining the status quo of bureaucratic delays, the existing costs to taxpayers will remain.
Why is this on the ballot?
This is a City Charter amendment. All charter amendments must be approved by a 50% + 1 majority. Supervisor Connie Chan introduced this measure in order to kill Prop D.
- Sponsor: Supervisor Connie Chan
- Co-Sponsors: Supervisors Shamann Walton, Aaron Peskin, Dean Preston, Hillary Ronen, and Gordon Mar
- Placed on ballot by: Supervisors Connie Chan, Shamann Walton, Aaron Peskin, Dean Preston, Hillary Ronen, Gordon Mar, and Ahsha Safaí
Why vote No?
Prop E seems similar to Prop D on the surface, but digging deeper reveals that it doesn't achieve its stated goals and contains a poison pill which will kill Prop D. In short: if you want more homes in San Francisco, vote No on E and Yes on D.
Prop E maintains the existing sclerotic bureaucratic processes which the Board of Supervisors and NIMBY groups across the city use to block housing.
Prop E keeps in place "discretionary" permits, which means that nothing is guaranteed by law — instead, elected officials decide who can build what and where; a process ripe with corruption.
These discretionary permits don’t just introduce institutional corruption into the home building process, they also open up home builders to frivolous lawsuits on ridiculous grounds. For example, under Prop E the builders who wanted to turn a valet parking lot into homes for nearly 500 people would still have been stopped by the Board of Supervisors. Even though denying this project was illegal (and the city is now being sued for it), the Board knew they had the power and the chance to get away with it.
The most common weapon of choice for anyone trying to stop a project is the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), a state law that requires most housing projects to undergo an environmental review. “Environmental impacts” can be interpreted broadly, and the Board of Supervisors has been accused of using CEQA as cover to tank projects for political reasons. That was the case in the much-publicized delay of 469 Stevenson, a proposed 500-unit development on a downtown parking lot, which led to a state investigation of SF’s housing policies.
-How San Francisco Makes It Insanely Hard to Build Housing in the SF Standard
Prop E is being put forward by the Board of Supervisors in response to Prop D. Their goal is to stop all housing growth in San Francisco, and that's exactly what Prop E will do.