What We're Reading, Watching, and Listening to: April 7, 2023

A roundup of news and multimedia from the Unfamiliar Terrain team:

San Francisco

• S.F. housing production slows to crawl as state goals loom (San Francisco Chronicle): The Planning Department’s annual housing inventory showed housing production plummeted.
• 87 permits, 1,000 days of meetings and $500,000 in fees: How bureaucracy fuels S.F.’s housing crisis (San Francisco Chronicle): Can the status quo be fixed and, if so, how?
• New San Francisco ordinance would ease office building conversions (San Francisco Business Times): Lawmakers introduced legislation to ease the conversion of underutilized offices into housing and non-office uses.
• Cities are struggling. San Francisco could be in for the biggest ‘doom loop’ of all (San Francisco Chronicle): Will interconnected forces create a vicious cycle, trapping the City in an economic free fall?
• ‘Doom loop’? Perhaps. Or maybe, S.F., we’re looking at this the wrong way (San Francisco Chronicle): Thoughts on the future of the City through the eyes of a new generation.

Bay Area

• 2023 Outlook: Colliers’ Julie Taylor Speculates on Future of Northern California’s Retail Market (The Registry): Will the Bay Area retail market bounce back yet again?

California

• New bill would let California’s attorney general jump into more housing fights (San Francisco Chronicle): Attorney General Rob Bonta is asking state legislators to give him another tool to rein in scofflaw municipalities.
• California sues Huntington Beach over ban on housing projects (Los Angeles Times): The lawsuit targets the City’s ban on applications for projects under SB 9.
• California housing and the environment are often at odds. They don’t have to be (Los Angeles Times): Thoughts on the interconnectedness of the state’s housing shortage and climate crisis.

National

• No State Has an Adequate Supply of Affordable Rental Housing for the Lowest Income Renters (National Low Income Housing Coalition): A deep dive into the national shortage of affordable rental housing.
• So You Want to Turn an Office Building Into a Home? (The New York Times): The process is usually harder than you might think.
• ‘Excuse After Excuse’: Black and Latino Developers Face Barriers to Success (The New York Times): The for-profit real estate development industry is in the midst of a stark representation crisis, according to a new report.
• NIMBYs Threaten a Plan to Build More Suburban Housing (The New York Times): New York legislators rejected proposals from Gov. Kathy Hochul that would begin to address the state’s crisis in available housing.
• The Obvious Answer to Homelessness (The Atlantic): Examining the impact of housing scarcity on homelessness.
• Apartment-Building Sales Drop 74%, the Most in 14 Years (The Wall Street Journal): Interest-rate increases and banking upheaval have pushed down demand for multifamily buildings.

Urban Planning