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0 pointstimr11y ago0 comments

Well...here's a fact: I live in the neighborhood, in one of those residential units that you're saying didn't exist before the 1990s. It was built in the early 1900s. There's always been residential space in SOMA, and yes, a lot of it got knocked down to build these lofts. The live/work zoning changes were to allow rezoning of industrial spaces, but that doesn't mean that SOMA was exclusively industrial.

I don't know if "most" live/work units require a "business license", but I know that they weren't intended to be office buildings -- which is what you seem to be asserting. They were the "solution" to artists being pushed out of the city during the last major boom. And it backfired.

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spikels11y ago· 2 in thread

Nobody said SOMA didn't have residential property. It is a patchwork of different uses and zonings.

But you are simply* wrong that housing was destroyed or people were evicted to build live/work. As you now admit it was only built on industrial property. It is against the law to live in industrial properties - it simply not safe. However it is possible that people living illegally in industial space were evicted.

You stated that "a lot of people were evicted" to build live/work. Can you document even one example.

C'mon timr! You are letting you opinions corrupt your understanding of the facts. The world is just not so simple that everything will conform to preconceived beliefs. You need to actually check the facts not just make them up. Just admit you were wrong, move on and try not to do it again.

*-typo: simple->simply Thanks timr!

timrOP11y ago

I didn't say that live/work lofts were created from industrial space. I said I live in an older, non-industrial property in SOMA, and that there are/were many examples of same. And while the live/work legislation was a compromise to allow rezoning of industrial space, that is not the same thing as saying that live/work lofts replaced only industrial spaces. That's not true.

Two seconds of google:

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/PAGE-ONE-Loft-War-Raging-...

"At Shift Media Inc., a small but prosperous firm on Bryant Street in the Mission, half a dozen employees work in a high-tech bunker developing Web sites for some of the nation's biggest companies. Another 20 businesses with 50 more workers share the building....Late last year, a new owner bought all the buildings on the block. The tenants in one were evicted so that it could be converted to lofts."

My point is -- and always was -- that the "build up" mantra was heeded in the late 90s, and developers used the new leniency not to build housing for artists and low-income people, but to build offices and luxury housing. This will happen again.

spikels11y ago

As explained live/work was only built on non-residential land - residential units were created and none were destroyed. This is good for housing and only bad for industrial users no longer welcome in SF anyway.

You link does not support your claims. Shift Media is a business (ironically web dev) who lost their lease and moved - nobody lived there. The artist mentioned - who actually did lose her home - was living illegally in a warehouse. So unless you against enforcing zoning - not sure what we can do.

Live/work has been good for housing but way to small to have have an impact. Although I agree it did not live up to it's pro-artist hype. This was do to poor drafting (possibly intentionally or possibly just impossible - try defining "artist") by the SF BoS. Developers just followed the rules which were then changed a few years later. Similar thing happened in NYC at least twice (e.g. AIR in SOHO.

Today it is pretty much impossible for developers to build housing for low income people in SF without heavy subsidies. Land is just to expensive and building costs too high. Only huge easing of development regulations to make more buildable land available and costs lower would make a difference but you are against this as are most people in SF. So we should expect more of the same and the slow and steady gentrification will continue - it is totally predictable.

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