Newsom advised to require 20% of new units to be child-friendly
From today’s Chronicle, “With hundreds of families fleeing San Francisco for the suburbs in search of cheaper housing and better schools, some of Mayor Gavin Newsom’s policy experts are telling him to stem the tide by requiring developers to include so-called family friendly units in future housing projects.”
“A six-point plan delivered to Newsom on Tuesday from his Policy Council on Children, Youth and Families suggested that at least 20 percent of the units in new developments include the things families with children need — from reasonable rent or mortgage to ample closet space, bathtubs, large kitchens, access to the outside and laundry facilities.”
“Newsom said he’ll have to review the council’s proposal before commenting, but added he expects controversy. “I told them that (20 percent) is high, and they said the controversy is that it’s too low and the council wants to go higher,” Newsom said. “But there is some concern that with the softening (real estate) market we can actually hurt the development of new construction and new housing” by imposing more regulations, he said.”
“[The council] is looking to Vancouver, British Columbia, which repopulated its inner city with 4,000 children, compared with the few hundred that lived there 15 years ago. Vancouver’s chief planner, Larry Beasley, said Vancouver started in the 1980s requiring that major residential downtown development must reserve at least 20 percent of its units for low-income tenants and at least 25 percent for families with children, and these must be located within a 10-minute walk of a school.”
“Meanwhile, Gabriel Metcalf, who heads the think tank San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association, says the answer lies in changing local laws to allow developers to build more densely and higher.”
“The bottom line is we have to construct more family friendly housing, period,” Newsom said. “We have focused a lot on supportive housing (for the homeless) and affordable housing, and we haven’t had a dialog around family-friendly housing.”
The following are comments I just sent(before finding your blog) to the author of the SF Chronicle article on housing you reference”
We are a Los Angeles family in the heat of chilbearing and rearing who might consider relocating to San Francisco if we could afford good housing.
Several similar articles I’ve found, focus on improving education in SFO. We have no interest in using public/government schools but would like to live in a city that is friendly and supportive of parents who are opting out of school for their young children.(aka homeschooling or unschooling)
Parents who bypass the public/government school system tend to be independent, intelligent and generally outstanding citizens. They also tend to produce large families. Homeschooling families generally make use of all of the museums, parks, events, etc., taking what the city has to offer and incorporating it into the education of their children as opposed to needing the city to offer them something “extra” via the public/government school system.
I think San Francisco would do well to focus on this key segment of the population and to somehow focus on recruiting “homeschooling families.” What would make San Francisco a great place to live for these families is simply efficient, affordable housing in safe neighborhoods…and all the better if the city were able to figure out a way to create a type of “homeschooling” neighborhood.
Lori Ann in L.A. at March 1st, 2006 at 12:19 am ( )