Council Update: Affordable Housing and Street Performers

By Jorge Casuso

The City Council late Tuesday night unveiled a plan to create affordable housing and tweaked its new performer's ordinance to create more harmony on the street.

The city's new Affordable Housing Production Program provides developers with several options to help satisfy the city's obligation to create affordable housing.

Proponents touted the plan as an important step in providing affordable units in a booming real estate market that coincides with a state law allowing landlords to charge what the market will bear for vacated rent-controlled units. The state law also forced the council to allow developers to pay a fee instead of complying with a decades old voter mandate that they build low and affordable housing units on site.

But the fee -- $6.14 a square foot for apartments - encouraged developers to pay instead of building the units. The council, which approved the plan with six votes and one abstention, hopes the new plan will spur the development of affordable housing. The measure:

· Provides various zoning incentives for building affordable housing units on-site.
· Sets guidelines for constructing affordable units off site.
· Establishes more flexible ways of calculating sales price and resale requirements for affordable condominiums.
· Establishes procedures for qualifying tenants and purchasers for affordable units and establishes a waiting list for referrals to developers.
· Allows landlords to dedicate land for affordable housing.

Councilman Paul Rosenstein, who abstained from the vote, contends that the plan is little more than window dressing and that developers will refuse an offer that makes no economic sense.

In a separate measure, the council adopted minor revisions to the street performers' ordinance it had amended in July.

Among the revisions to the ordinance - which applies to the pier and the Third Street Promenade - the council clarified the meaning of the present requirement that street performers rotate every two hours on the even hours. Some performers were beginning to perform five minutes after the hour, for instance, and therefore were allowed to retain the spot for close to four hours before they were required to move.

The council also more clearly defined "tangible art," which includes paintings, drawings, henna tatoos and photographs. In addition, it allowed performers to use wet cell batteries as long as they do not have removable fill caps.