Underperforming Asphalt: New SF Affordable Housing

March 24, 2011

New SF Affordable Housing

SJ Mercury News: The Metropolitan Transportation Committee has committed $10 million to a $50 million revolving fund for affordable housing near transit stops. Morgan Stanley, Citi Community Capital, and several other financial and nonprofit groups to create the fund, called the Bay Area Transit Oriented Affordable Housing Fund.

Officials plan to make the first $4.8 million loan to buy a San Francisco parking lot where developers plan to construct a 14-story building with 150 apartments and a ground-floor grocery story at Eddy and Taylor streets.

It's great to see money being freed up for housing, post economic liquidity/loan contraction. Affordable housing is also chronically underfunded, as, you know, incentives skew more strongly toward non-affordable housing (read: luxury condos). Such is life, such is the market.

Map:

Street view:

Of course, the shortage of parking in SF is a bone of contention. But in the heart of downtown, I can think of better lot uses than car storage.

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Premise

Suburban areas are automobile scale. This requires surfeits of space and asphalt, generating lower densities and further necessitating automobiles. The positive feedback (and resource consumption) loop goes on and on.

This blog is first and foremost about establishing that suburbs need to change, and deconstructing the assumption that such places cannot evolve toward more sustainable patterns. With smart retooling, suburbs can accommodate more diverse uses than their land-use lets on.

I'll explore suburban busing, biking, BARTing, walking, parking, building designing, retrofitting, greening, funding, and zoning, all with an eye toward rethinking the shape and function of the suburbs.