Posts Tagged With: Today’s World

Improving Bike+Bus Routes through Belmont Village

Belmont is evaluating pedestrian and bike improvements to Ralston Avenue. These improvements build on the Pedestrian and Bicycle Master Plan.

There is pretty good cycle access all the way from the eastern tip of Foster City to the Belmont Caltrain station.

However, the cycling access from the Caltrain station to Safeway, NDNU or Carlmont Village falls down a little bit. There is a huge intersection at Ralston and ECR with no bike paths. The bike plan says cyclists should ride on Emmett past City Hall and rejoin Ralston further west, but there are no bike lanes in this area.

Emmett has no bike lanes and parking on both sides.

If you are riding east it is difficult to get from Emmett to the Caltrain station - cars can make a left turn across two lanes of ECR into fast moving traffic and then merge right, but this is dicey on a bike. I usually ride on the sidewalk past the Panda Express to the intersection. The sidewalk is narrow and passes the ECR Rapid bus stop.

The bike plan (page 72) calls for a HAWK crossing at ECR and Emmett to allow bikes to get across, then a bike lane on the east side of ECR. HAWK intersections are confusing for drivers, and no guarantee for ped/bike safety - your author recently spotted an instruction sign for drivers on the side of the road near a HAWK beacon on El Camino Real in Redwood City.

It would also require cyclists to make a dangerous crossing across ECR that no one currently attempts, cross the driveway for the parking lot, and add an additional stop that reduces vehicle/SamTrans ECR bus levels of service along El Camino Real.

How else could we get bikes from Caltrain to Emmett? One idea would be to have a two-way cycle track on the south side of ECR where there is currently a bus stop and a lane of parked cars. The bus would stop in the lane on ECR, like in this photo - we wouldn't have enough room for a bench to the left of the cycle track, but this should give the basic idea.

This would do a few different things, all of them good.

First, it does not introduce an additional stopping point for cars and SamTrans buses along El Camino Real, which means those roads will have a higher level of service.

Second, it would remove the need for a dangerous HAWK crossing and add a protected path on a dangerous section of road for cyclists. Particularly if you are heading east toward Caltrain, there are currently no good options for getting to the station.

Third, it would make the bus faster. Bus speeds are a problem for SamTrans that led to the introduction of the "ECR Rapid" bus route. Part of the problem are stops that require the bus to pull over, load passengers, then wait for a gap in traffic before merging back in. In-lane boarding would allow the bus to continue its journey without needing to merge back into traffic, saving up to 40 seconds per trip.

Fourth, it would likely be faster, by allowing bikes to piggy back on the existing pedestrian crossing at Ralston and ECR. HAWK beacons require all traffic to wait for the beacon to stop traffic, which can take thirty seconds or more.

Fifth, it could permit installation of an ADA compliant bus stop. The current bus stop offloads onto a brick sidewalk on a slope, intermixed with trees. A treatment in the cycle track segment could include a level boarding space for wheelchairs.

There are some problems, notably that there is not much room for this. Curb-to-median, this stretch of El Camino Real is 32 feet. The preferable alternative would be a bike lane protected by a bus island, like this one on Church St. in San Francisco. We can't do this because the recommended minimum width for bus islands is 8 feet, space that we don't have.

There is a one foot gutter next to the median and the car lanes are 10 feet each, giving us 11 feet for a 4 foot cycle track in each direction, plus a small buffer zone between the track and the car lane, which could include a railing for additional safety. The entire cycle track/buffer would be raised to the level of the current curb.

If you moved the limit line on ECR on the south side of Ralston back ten feet, you could add a treatment like this for crossing ECR on your bike:

Which would result in a bike route through town like this, in both directions.

What do you think? I am not super happy with this design, but I'm not sure how else cyclists should be expected to get from Emmett St. to the Caltrain station. Moving the bus boarding in-lane would be a big win.

There is a meeting October 10, 6pm at City Hall where Belmont Public Works will be revealing plans for the HAWK beacon and other bike improvements. Please show up and provide your feedback.

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Amazon’s ALB’s do not validate TLS certificates from internal services

If you are using an Amazon Application Load Balancer, and forwarding traffic to internal services using HTTPS, the ALB will not validate the certificate presented by the internal service before forwarding the traffic.

So we're clear here, let's say you are running a web server on Amazon ECS. The webserver is configured to present TLS certificates to incoming requests, receive encrypted TLS traffic. The web server is part of a ELB v2 Target Group. There are two hops in this flow:

  • Customer iPhone/laptop/whatever connects to Amazon ALB. You can upload a certificate to Amazon to present to the customer. The customer's iPhone/browser/whatever will (hopefully) verify that certificate before sending requests to the ALB.

  • The ALB forwards the request to your webserver. ALB will look up the right Listener for the request, and then forward it to a ELB v2 Target Group. You can configure the Target Group to receive requests over HTTP or HTTPS.

  • If you choose HTTPS, the ALB will establish a connection and request a certificate from a random host in the Target Group. It will not validate that certificate; it will just send the traffic.

Here is the configuration for a Target Group. There's no check box for "validate HTTPS traffic from internal service."

The entire point of HTTPS is to encrypt traffic. Otherwise, a random person snooping on the network could present a weak certificate and send back whatever data it wants. We learned in 2014 that the NSA was doing this, between and inside data centers and at key points in the US.

It's unacceptable for a major Internet service in 2018 to blindly accept certificates presented by an internal service without validating them.

For the moment, I suggest using the Network Load Balancer type, which forwards the raw TCP traffic to your machine. You don't get any of the nice features of an ALB, but at least you will have the ability to reject raw traffic. If you know of other providers that offer load balancers with TLS certificate validation, please send me an email.

Update: Please read the reply from AWS.

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Otto LLC Assignment for Benefit of Creditors (bankruptcy)

Twelve days before Christmas 2017, Otto LLC, a company that wanted to produce smart locks, shut down with little notice. Employees were given no severance and contractors were left with tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid invoices. This incident was widely covered in the press, and one board member has since quit the venture capital industry.

Otto has sold all of their assets to a company that specializes in liquidation and is now going through an "assignment for benefit of creditors."

I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice, but that said, here is how this works at a high level. Everyone submits their claims to the Assignee. These claims have different levels of priority; people who lent money to the company have one priority, people who are owed money for services have a different priority, people who own shares in the company have a different priority. Generally, all of the claims at one priority are paid out before proceeding to the next class.

The Assignee is required to post notice in a newspaper, that's it - they don't have a requirement to notify you personally. I found the address for submitting claims, though. If Otto owes you money, go here to submit your claim: https://fileaclaim.info/Otto-ABC. You have until November 2, 2018.

Yes, that is the real URL.

I wish you the best of luck, however, I fear that there is not very much money left to pay claims, so you might not get very much. Still, a little bit is better than nothing.

If there are any questions I can answer for you, or if there's anything I can help you do to find a new position, please get in touch.

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Opportunity for more affordable housing in Belmont

Belmont is finalizing plans to build affordable housing on two parcels it owns across from the Caltrain station along El Camino Real. The proposal from the developer, LINC Housing, would construct around 20 large-family affordable units (2 and 3 bedrooms) and 20 senior housing units (one bedroom).

Mockup of proposed BMR project

Belmont reduced the parking requirements for new construction last year as part of the Village Specific Plan update. The large-family units would require 1.5 parking spaces each, and the senior units would require 1 parking space each, for a total of around 50 units. It is likely this parking would have to go underground. At a cost of $60,000 per below-ground parking space, it would cost around $3 million to build all of the required parking below ground, or about 15% of the total cost of the project.

Street layout of proposed BMR project

Changing transportation technology and services are already starting to cut into parking demand in some places (see this story from San Diego).

In the event that the below-ground parking becomes redundant, it will be difficult to repurpose for a more productive use. You can’t build apartments underground, and it’s unattractive space for businesses. So it would be prudent for the city to consider alternatives to building more parking than it may need.

Quite a lot of parking already exists in close proximity to the proposed sites, north of the Caltrain station across the street. A June 2017 Caltrain parking analysis indicated that just 2% of the spaces were occupied on the given weekday.

Caltrain
utilization

I snapped these photos of the lot at 1pm in April 2018.

Empty lot across the street

What if Belmont were to enter into a parking sharing agreement with Caltrain? Caltrain could issue permits to residents of the proposed new development. Even 50 permits would not result in the lot being full, and the extra cars would mostly use the lot at night, when commuters are gone and the Caltrain lot is empty.

There is a precedent here. Caltrain and the City of Mountain View developed a shared parking agreement with a townhouse developer near the San Antonio station, as part of the San Antonio Station Precise Plan.

San Antonio agreement

Using the parking lot across the street would free up about $3 million. What could Belmont do with that money? For $200,000, the city could build a HAWK pedestrian crossing at Hill St, shaving 4 minutes off the walk to the train station and the northbound ECR bus stop. This crossing is proposed in the Belmont Pedestrian Master Plan.

HAWK installation at
Hill Street

Further, lifting the on-site parking requirement might make it feasible to develop Site C (780 El Camino Real), which is owned by the city. LINC Housing's proposal did not include development for this site. A sloped, funky-shaped lot would be a lot easier to develop if it didn't require a parking ramp and additional driveway.

Site C

What do you think? Send your thoughts to the Belmont City Council (CityCouncil@belmont.gov), as well as the city’s project lead, Jennifer Rose (jrose@belmont.gov) and community director, Carlos de Melo (cdemelo@belmont.gov).

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Where is everyone going to live?

In the middle of a housing crisis, cities up and down the Peninsula are moving forward with plans to add a ton of new office space and no new housing. These plans will add many more new commuters, without any corresponding housing for them.

  • Last year the Apple Park launched in Cupertino. 2.8 million sq ft of office space (room for 18,000 workers), no new housing.

  • Brisbane just put a plan for the Baylands on the 2018 ballot. 4 million sq ft of office space (room for 26,000 workers), 2200 housing units.

  • South San Francisco is moving forward with Oyster Point development. 1.5 million sq ft of office space (room for 10,000 workers), 1200 housing units.

  • San Francisco is moving forward with the Central SOMA Plan. 6 million sq ft of office space (room for 40,000 workers), only 7000 housing units.

  • Facebook wants to add 35,000 employees in Menlo Park, with only 1500 housing units to match.

Where are all of those commuters supposed to live? No one is planning on adding housing to match the new office space being added.

We have seen this story play out already. Those rich new workers are going to want apartments near their offices, so they'll bid up the price of existing housing. This will lead to gentrification and displacement. Everyone who can't afford to do that will commute from Pleasanton, Gilroy and Stockton. This will clog 101 and the San Mateo Bridge, leading to even worse traffic.

It cracks me up when folks say "Why doesn't Google just build their next office in Bakersfield?" Your own City Councils are rolling out the red carpet to host their next office, so they can get that sweet revenue, and don't care/don't want to add any housing to match. This is what "local control" has gotten us and the results have been ruinous.

My brother and sister have already left the Bay Area. My best friend grew up 300 yards from me and now is raising his family in Savannah, GA. I'm worried I'm going to be next. All of these new developments are the world's slowest moving steamroller, driving up rent and housing prices. $3m for a home and $4,000 median rents are in our near future.

How can we turn these traffic and displacement bombs around?

  • Call your Senator and Assemblymember to support SB 827, which could actually add enough new housing near transit to reverse our traffic problems and slow the explosive growth of rents.

  • Support new housing in your town. The State is adding bonuses for adding new housing units, but developers are choosing not to use them, for fear of community backlash. Tonight, for example, there's a meeting about 935 homes at Concar Drive at San Mateo City Hall at 7pm, and another at Millbrae City Hall about the Serra Station project adjacent to Millbrae BART. These could use voices in support.

  • If you're someone who does not benefit from a fixed rate mortgage and Prop 13, or if you are and you're worried about where your kids are going to live, consider running for City Council or applying for Planning Commission in your town. Sign up for mailing lists to get notified about new events happening: I run one (kev@inburke.com) or yimbyaction.org/sanmateo.

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How to write Go middleware

Writing middleware in Go seems pretty easy at first, but there are several easy ways to trip up. Let's walk through some examples.

Reading the Request

All of the middlewares in our examples will accept an http.Handler as an argument, and return an http.Handler. This makes it easy to chain middlewares. The basic pattern for all of our middlewares will be something like this:

func X(h http.Handler) http.Handler {
    return http.HandlerFunc(func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
        // Something here...
        h.ServeHTTP(w, r)
    })
}

Let's say we want to redirect all requests with a trailing slash - say, /messages/, to their non-trailing-slash equivalent, say /messages. We could write something like this:

func TrailingSlashRedirect(h http.Handler) http.Handler {
	return http.HandlerFunc(func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
		if r.URL.Path != "/" && r.URL.Path[len(r.URL.Path)-1] == '/' {
			http.Redirect(w, r, r.URL.Path[:len(r.URL.Path)-1], http.StatusMovedPermanently)
			return
		}
		h.ServeHTTP(w, r)
	})
}

Easy enough.

Modifying the Request

Let's say we want to add a header to the request, or otherwise modify it. The docs for a http.Handler say:

Except for reading the body, handlers should not modify the provided Request.

The Go standard library copies http.Request objects before passing them down the response chain, and we should as well. Let's say we want to set a Request-Id header on every request, for internal tracing. Create a shallow copy of the *Request and modify the header before proxying.

func RequestID(h http.Handler) http.Handler {
	return http.HandlerFunc(func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
		r2 := new(http.Request)
		*r2 = *r
		r2.Header.Set("X-Request-Id", uuid.NewV4().String())
		h.ServeHTTP(w, r2)
	})
}

Writing Response Headers

If you want to set response headers, you can just write them and then proxy the request.

func Server(h http.Handler, servername string) http.Handler {
	return http.HandlerFunc(func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
		w.Header().Set("Server", servername)
		h.ServeHTTP(w, r)
	})
}

Last Write Wins

The problem with the above is if the inner Handler also sets the Server header, your header will get overwritten. This can be problematic if you do not want to expose the Server header for internal software, or if you want to strip headers before sending a response to the client.

To do this, we have to implement the ResponseWriter interface ourselves. Most of the time we'll just proxy through to the underlying ResponseWriter, but if the user tries to write a response we'll sneak in and add our header.

type serverWriter struct {
	w            http.ResponseWriter
	name         string
	wroteHeaders bool
}

func (s *serverWriter) Header() http.Header {
	return s.w.Header()
}

func (s *serverWriter) WriteHeader(code int) http.Header {
	if s.wroteHeader == false {
		s.w.Header().Set("Server", s.name)
		s.wroteHeader = true
	}
	s.w.WriteHeader(code)
}

func (s *serverWriter) Write(b []byte) (int, error) {
	if s.wroteHeader == false {
		// We hit this case if user never calls WriteHeader (default 200)
		s.w.Header().Set("Server", s.name)
		s.wroteHeader = true
	}
	return s.w.Write(b)
}

To use this in our middleware, we'd write:

func Server(h http.Handler, servername string) http.Handler {
	return http.HandlerFunc(func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
		sw := &serverWriter{
			w:    w,
			name: servername,
		}
		h.ServeHTTP(sw, r)
	})
}

What if user never calls Write or WriteHeader?

If the user doesn't call Write or WriteHeader - for example, a 200 with an empty body, or a response to an OPTIONS request - neither of our intercept functions will run. So we should add one more check after the ServeHTTP call for that case.

func Server(h http.Handler, servername string) http.Handler {
	return http.HandlerFunc(func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
		sw := &serverWriter{
			w:    w,
			name: servername,
		}
		h.ServeHTTP(sw, r)
		if sw.wroteHeaders == false {
			s.w.Header().Set("Server", s.name)
			s.wroteHeader = true
		}
	})
}

Other ResponseWriter interfaces

The ResponseWriter interface is only required to have three methods. But in practice, it can respond to other interfaces as well, for example http.Pusher. Your middleware might accidentally disable HTTP/2 support, which would not be good.

// Push implements the http.Pusher interface.
func (s *serverWriter) Push(target string, opts *http.PushOptions) error {
	if pusher, ok := s.w.(http.Pusher); ok {
		return pusher.Push(target, opts)
	}
	return http.ErrNotSupported
}

// Flush implements the http.Flusher interface.
func (s *serverWriter) Flush() {
	f, ok := s.w.(http.Flusher)
	if ok {
		f.Flush()
	}
}

That's it

Best of luck! What middlewares have you written, and how did it go?

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We Can’t Keep Ignoring the Bay’s Housing Politics

Do you work in the tech industry in the Bay Area? You should start learning about, and getting involved in, local housing politics.

The prognosis for housing and rent prices is bad, and things are likely going to get worse for tech workers in the Bay, unless we start taking action. I will explain why prices will keep going up, and what you can do to help.

Why Should You Care?

Salaries in the tech industry are really good! Rent may be high, but you make more, and can count on raises to outpace rent increases. Why should you care?

  • You may want your children to be able to afford to live where they grew up. Thirty years ago, you could buy a house in the Bay Area for 3-4x the average income. Frequently now that number is 8-10x, and that house may be out in Antioch.1

  • San Francisco has a huge number of people commute downtown every day, which stress our highways and tunnels. Long commutes are correlated with lower happiness, and are more harmful for the environment. If we built more housing near where people work, commutes would be shorter.

  • Lower rents mean that there's more money in your pocket.

  • You may want to buy a home, and you may not have rich parents, or have been an early employee at a rocketship startup.

  • Cheaper housing helps less fortunate people make it and get a leg up. The Bay Area has one of the tightest job markets and most dynamic local economies in the US. People not making very much in other areas can move here, get a job and earn a higher salary than they can in, say, Reno. The high starting prices for housing discourage this, which means it's more difficult for the middle class to get a foothold in the Bay Area.

  • You may want to send your children to school in the area. Schoolteachers largely can't afford to live in San Francisco, which makes it harder to recruit good teachers for your kids, in public or private schools. Your employees have this same problem.

  • If you want to start a company, you'll need to hire employees. Higher home prices and rents mean that you have to pay higher salaries and more for rent. This makes your startup less viable.

  • If you want to fund startups, high salaries and rents mean you have to have larger rounds, and that your money doesn't go as far.

How an Empty Plot of Land Becomes Housing You Can Live In

You have to jump through many hoops to build housing in San Francisco. This section is long, but it's important to know how many different opportunities there are for NIMBY's to stall a project they don't like.

  1. Buy land you want to develop on. There are many underdeveloped properties in San Francisco - parking lots, unused office spaces, or undeveloped lots owned by the City.
  1. Submit a building plan to the City that follows the zoning code. Put up signs in the neighborhood explaining what you are building. Start working on permits. This part is pretty standard across all cities.

    If your property is on the waterfront, your project needs to be approved by a majority of city residents in the next citywide election, thanks to 2014's Proposition B, which requires any new waterfront development to be voted on by the entire city. If you want to build in SOMA or the Mission and your housing would replace a production, distribution or repair business, you need to create one elsewhere or add space in your building for it, thanks to 2016's Prop X.

  1. You have to submit an "Environmental Impact Report" (EIR) which explains the environmental impact your building will have. There were over 200 different "impacts" that can be considered - noise, traffic, crime, etc. All of these were given equal weight until a few years ago. These "impacts" are local to the area — you can't count "People will have to commute from Stockton if we don't build in SF" as an impact, even though it's true, and bad. Most of the time, you can reuse an existing Environmental Impact Report that has been prepared for a given neighborhood. More on this later.

  2. If a neighbor doesn't like your project, they can pay just $578 to ask for a "Discretionary Review" by the Planning Commission. This is supposed to be for extraordinary circumstances, but pretty much anyone can file for any reason. Common ones are because a project will block your view, will cast a shadow on your beer garden, won't fit with "the character of the neighborhood," or requires a "variance," some small change from the zoning code.

    You are supposed to meet with the community at this point. Your neighbors probably won't like your project. They may invoke the words "3 story monstrosity" to describe it, pass around flyers saying it will "ruin neighborhood character", or say there will be increased crime, a harder time finding parking, etc. If they can't block the project, they want you to make it shorter and smaller. But resolving the issue by reducing the number of units makes your project less viable.

    If you can't resolve the issue it goes to the Planning Commission, which has seven members, four of whom are appointed by the Mayor, three by the City Supervisors. You get ten minutes to explain why you should be allowed to build. The opponents get ten minutes to complain about their views. There is a "public comment" section where members of the public get 2 minutes to talk about the project.2

    The Planning Commission may ask you to compromise, approve the project, deny the project, or punt the decision by a month. They frequently deny projects. Let's say they approve the project. Hurray!

  3. Your neighbors may appeal the decision to the full Board of Supervisors. There are 11 supervisors, one for each district in San Francisco. The Board is currently split between people who want more housing and people who say they want more housing, but repeatedly vote for rules that make it harder to build housing.

    The most frequent appeal angle is to say that the EIR is not valid. Recently, one guy in the Mission appealed a 100% affordable, 94-unit building for senior citizens. You can read the appeal for yourself. The main reason the appellant thinks there should be a new EIR is because these poor senior citizens will cause vagrancy, crime, and littering in the neighborhood. Certainly these effects would be much worse if we didn't build the housing, and these seniors would be on the street.3

    You are about six to eighteen months into the permit process at this point. And the Board may vote to turn down your project! Recently a 157-unit project in the Mission, with 39 affordable units, was denied by the Board.

    Neighborhood groups may try to make a "deal" where the developer essentially buys their support. Calle 24, an anti-gentrification group in the Mission, recently negotiated a "deal" with another building where they would drop their protests in exchange for $1 million.

  1. At any time during this process your permit might run out, the bank might decide to cancel your loan, market conditions may change, the City might vote to make your project infeasible. This is why your neighbors use so many stalling tactics - the longer they can stall, the more likely you will pull out of the project.

  2. If the BoS approves your project, your neighbors have one more recourse: they can file a California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) lawsuit. The lawsuit alleges, essentially, that a project would be harmful to the environment, and the developers haven't sufficiently considered those impacts.

    If you were considering the environment at a regional level, you would probably want to build as densely as possible, and optimize for short commutes - so you'd file lawsuits to block low density projects that build on undeveloped land. However, a recent study found that CEQA lawsuits target infill projects (which increase density) by a 4 to 1 ratio. CEQA is well intentioned, but frequently abused. In one instance, abortion opponents filed a CEQA lawsuit to block a Planned Parenthood. They said that the Planned Parenthood hadn't adequately considered the noise that the protesters themselves would generate!.

  3. Finally, if you navigate this intimidating gauntlet, and are determined to stick with the project, and your permits haven't expired, you can break ground on your project. It's extremely expensive to build here, and while the sums are large and the rent is high, developers do not make much money. One developer, Boston Properties, targets a 7% return, which is not large given the risk involved.

How does this work in places that keep prices low? States like Texas have lots of land and loose zoning codes. Other countries, like Japan, work around this by setting housing policy at the regional or national level. Essentially, they don't let NIMBY's have a say in the process.

Other Housing Errata

  • The city of San Francisco is half as dense as Brooklyn. We can achieve large decreases in rent prices by just building 4-5 stories on empty lots around the city.
  • If you live in a building that is older than 1979, you are entitled to rent control, which means that your landlord can only increase your rent by a few percent per year (the exact percentage is controlled by the SF Rent Board and tied to inflation. Last year it was 2.2%). You have a wide array of rights as a tenant; you may even have tenants rights if you have been living in a place for more than 30 days and don't have a formal contract with your landlord, or are not on the lease.

    Econ 101 classes will teach you that rent control depresses supply, but I don't think it's too relevant to the SF housing crunch. If we didn't touch a single rent controlled unit, and just built 4-5 story units on the underdeveloped lots around the city, we'd be in a great place, housing wise.

  • There are well intentioned people who believe that building new housing supply actually creates more demand, and show up to meetings opposing any new development. This theory is not borne out by the evidence; the city has built a ton of new housing since 2015, and as a result, market rate rents have fallen by about 5% since the peak of the market. Other cities like Denver and Seattle have also seen rent decreases in response to new housing coming on the market. Furthermore, if increased supply really increased demand, the opposite would also be true - reducing supply would reduce demand even further! But no one suggests that destroying housing in SF would lower prices.

  • There are well intentioned people who believe that the only new housing in SF should be 100% affordable. 100% affordable projects are not profitable or viable for private developers, so they require subsidies. There is only so much money for subsidies, and in addition the Trump administration is interested in cutting federal subsidies for affordable housing.

  • There are well intentioned people who believe that the only way to prevent gentrification is to prevent any new buildings from being built - groups like MEDA and Calle 24, who have successfully fought projects in the Mission. Blocking new supply doesn't do anything about high demand, of course, and the result is existing buildings getting resold for millions of dollars, as we're seeing in the Mission, and ordinary people can't find new places to live, or can't move within their neighborhood.

  • There are less well intentioned landlords and real estate agents who oppose new housing because no new supply drives up the demand for existing housing, which increases their property values.

  • The most frequent complaints are that a project has too many luxury units and that it's too tall. These complaints and process impediments drive up the price of building here, which mean that the only viable projects are (1) targeted at the high end of the market, and/or (2) contain lots of units. Ironically, the complaints about luxury and height make it harder to build projects that aren't very tall and very high end!

  • Construction unions often oppose projects (and sometimes file CEQA lawsuits to block them) if the construction wages aren't high enough, or if the developer wants to use non-union labor.

  • You can complain to the Planning Commission that a project will cause shadows or block your view. In 99% of the country, these disputes are resolved by buying an easement, a contract that prevents your neighbor from blocking your view or casting a shadow.

    The Coase Theorem says this should be good enough; if you don't have an easement, we can conclude your neighbors value building high more than you value your view or your sunlight. Except in San Francisco! If your neighbor doesn't want to grant you an easement, you can complain to the Planning Commission and block their project.

How to Get Involved

All of this means that building new housing is really difficult in San Francisco, and as a result, rents and home prices are going to continue to increase, you will pay more in rent, you won't be able to hire employees or buy a house, and your kids' teachers won't have a place to live.

The problem is that prices are too high and there are too many roadblocks to building. The political goal is to lower prices by a) building more, and b) making it easier to build more. I support pretty much every project - 100% affordable, super high end market rate - as long as it gets a shovel in the ground. Every new unit helps - even if it's not in your price range, it means people in that price range aren't outbidding you for a place in your range.

Things that don't work

  • Bitching on Twitter - This accomplishes nothing, as the last election showed. The same way Indivisible Team and others are encouraging people to show up to town halls and flood their reps offices with phone calls - you need to do this for your local supervisors. The good news is that your local officials pick up the phone! And they don't get as many calls, so they're more responsive to your phone calls.

  • Building an app - We are not going to hackathon our way out of the housing crisis. We need to show up to planning meetings and whip support for bills.

  • Apathy - The default mode for tech employees, which is to not care about local politics and then outbid other residents for apartments. As long as this is true homes will be unaffordable, your kids schools will have tired teachers and your rents will keep rising.

If you have 5 minutes a week

Calling actually makes a difference! Call your supervisor or state rep and ask them to support building more housing, and to make the approval process simpler.

  • The most pressing SF issue concerns the percentage of affordable units per new development. Two SF supervisors want to force all new developments to have 28% of units be affordable, which is unworkable for many projects - 28% of zero new projects means that zero new units get built. A competing plan would lower the percentage to 18%, which would increase the total number of affordable units, despite being a lower percentage, because it would make more projects viable. Call your supervisor and ask them to support the Breed/Safai Prop C plan.
  • The most pressing area issue is what will happen to an industrial park in Brisbane. A developer wants to build 4,300 apartments on empty land, but the city is fighting back. If you live in Brisbane, call the mayor's office and tell them you support the development, or show up to the nightly meetings.

  • The next election, figure out how the candidates stand on housing, and vote for the pro-housing candidates. This is tricky, because everyone says they are pro-housing, but many will not help get shovels in the ground. "Preserve neighborhood character" is a red flag. "100% affordable only" is a red flag. Any reference to wind tunnels, shadows, or height is a red flag.

  • Sign up for SF Do Something. Follow SFYimby or East Bay Forward on Twitter, and call your supervisor when you hear about a helpful piece of legislation, or a stalled housing project.

  • There are several bills in the California State Legislature that help. SB 35 (sponsored by SF's Senator, Scott Wiener) would make it more difficult to stall projects if cities are not meeting their state-mandated housing goals. SF's Representative, David Chiu, sponsored a bill to tax vacation homes and use the money to support affordable housing. SB 167 would make it harder for cities to block housing projects. Call your state senator and representative and ask them to support these bills.

If you have an hour a week (especially if your work hours are flexible)

SF Yimby holds meetings once a month teaching new people how to make a difference in their community; check their Facebook for notifications about the next meeting.

Show up to your local city hearings and speak in support of projects. The Planning Commission meets at City Hall every Thursday and posts their agenda here. You can show up and give a comment.

  • Take BART or MUNI to City Hall, a block from the Civic Center station.

  • Ask the City Hall door guard where the Planning Commission meeting is.

  • There are little cards at the front of the room. Write down your name, and check the box that says "Support."

  • Sit in the meeting. When the Commissioner asks for comment, line up by the microphone. Say you are a city resident, and you support building the project. Here is a template:

    Hi, I'm [name here], a [renter|homeowner] in District [your district]. I'm speaking in support of the project. We are in the middle of a housing crisis, and the more housing we build, the more people can afford to live here. This project will help [X number of people] live in the city, close to where they work, and should go forward. Thank you for your time.

The wild thing is that the commissioners and supervisors apply ad-hoc, per project guidelines and often vote based on how many people comment in support or in opposition of the project. So your voice really does matter! But you have to show up.

The meetings can take a long time. City Hall has good wifi; I've sat in the back of the room and worked for hours at a time before while waiting for a bill.

You can also write an email to the Planning Commission in support of a particular project.

If you work in SF and commute to a megacorp in the South Bay

Menlo Park, Palo Alto, Mountain View and co love to build office space, but hate to build housing. Consider calling the city managers in the city you work in, and ask them to support more housing, so you can afford to live near where you work.

Your C-level managers or venture capital backers may not realize how bad the problem is for employees. Ask them to support pro-housing candidates and organizations.

Ask your company to try to build apartments in the area; Facebook is trying this.

If you have money

The tech community is learning slowly that it's not enough to air drop cash three months before an election; we have to build organizations and coalitions, get elected to committees like the local DCCC, and show up to meetings between elections. Donate to these local pro-housing organizations:

  • CARLA sues cities that break California state law to deny proposed projects. This is a surprisingly effective technique that is already producing results throughout the Bay Area, but lawsuits are expensive.

  • [Yimby Action][yimby] is a pro-housing lobbying group.

  • East Bay Forward is focused on building housing in the East Bay.

  • Donate to local pro-housing candidates. Volunteer for their campaigns; knock on doors.

Conclusion

Demand for housing in the Bay Area far outstrips supply, but it's really hard to build here, and there are a lot of people and procedures that want to keep things expensive and scarce. If you want to ever afford to buy a house here, it's time to start getting involved.

1 This doesn't stop old people from showing up to planning meetings and saying "I worked hard and built a house here and these spoiled young people can too!" It's three or four times as difficult now as it was in 1970.

2The comment quality can vary widely - at one recent public comment section, a commenter worried what would happen to the "rare plants" on a vacant lot.

370% of San Francisco's homeless were homed in San Francisco before they were on the street; it's a very local problem.

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Ethical Considerations for Software Engineers

The next president of the United States showed a willingness to violate historical norms while campaigning, and there's little evidence that he has any moral compass - the examples of this are legion, one of the worst is him cutting off medical treatment to his sick nephew over a legal dispute. His kids are going to run his businesses (with his name on them) while he is in office. He has also asked for security clearances for them. This is at best an unusual arrangement and at worst opens the door to massive corruption.

During the election the Russian government hacked and leaked the DCC's emails, then hacked and leaked the email of Hillary Clinton's campaign chief. Trump denied Russia's involvement publicly at a debate even though he'd been briefed on it. Trump has taken many sides on many issues but praise for Putin and Russia has been consistent. Trump just promoted a paid Russia Today commentator to his National Security Adviser. It is likely that Russian (and Chinese, Iranian, etc) hacking of US government offices and US companies will be tolerated over the next four years, especially if it benefits Trump and hurts his political allies.

It's important to note these attacks won't come out of the blue. It's not sunny one day and the next there are men in suits asking for data center access. There will probably be some pretext - a foreign war, a terror attack, something else, that'll be used to justify the unethical request. It's easy to imagine "Of course I will identify the racist thing!" and much harder in the moment, or in a context that's surrounded by fear.

Note also that if you are an engineer, these requests may come outside of normal channels. Last year, Yahoo fielded a request to search all emails for a given term. Yahoo's C-level executives went around the security team and asked engineers to implement this directly, at an extremely low level. Alex Stamos, Yahoo's CSO, resigned when he found out. You should be prepared to do the same. Don't expect unethical requests to show up on the backlog - it'll be a meeting you're pulled into with the CTO, or a man showing up at your apartment and threatening your immigration status unless you insert a backdoor.

Employees (and especially engineers) will be the key people to push back. Customers aren't always aware of shenanigans, and management can be under more pressure to make their company succeed. Especially in Silicon Valley, most employees have multiple job options, which gives us unique leverage. Every employee at a Silicon Valley company should be prepared for unethical or illegal requests, and (where appropriate) be prepared for state sponsored attacks, from the US government or another one. Every employee should be prepared to put pressure on management, and the legal team, to deny requests.

Here are some examples of ethical problems you might run into. I'd encourage you to have these discussions internally before you get put in the situation discussed below, and lay out bright lines for everyone in the company to follow, to make it clear where you stand and what's not acceptable. I would also encourage you to ask about these when you interview.

All

The pledge at neveragain.tech has covered this in more detail but here are some good questions to ask in an interview:

  • Do you encrypt messages that go from datacenter to datacenter? The NSA has spied on this data in the past.

  • Do you offer end-to-end encryption of messages sent between users?

  • Do you destroy sensitive data if it's not needed anymore? Do you destroy user data if they delete their accounts?

  • What is your policy to responding to requests from the US government and other governments?

  • Do you have data that would be valuable to foreign governments, or embarrassing to customers if it was made public? What's your strategy for protecting that data against sophisticated nation states?

  • Would you take money from the Trump Organization or its affiliates in exchange for an explicit or implicit guarantee of "protection"?

Venture Capitalists / CEO's

  • Donald Trump's children or their representatives may ask for a share in your fund, in exchange for favorable treatment from the federal government. Would you accept such a request? Note they may ask after they have successfully applied this approach to other companies.

  • You may be approached for an investment by a company or entity that has ties to the Russian government, or ties to the Trump Organization. This may be accompanied by a threat of harassment from the federal government, hacking, DDOS, or other. Would you accept the investment?

Slack

  • By default you store a company's entire conversation history, including DM's. Private information like this is easy to distort and take out of context. Russians hacked from the DCC and trickled emails to the press, with devastating effects. Should the default behavior for a Slack installation be to store a company's entire history?

  • What efforts are you making to educate users about the risks of storing their entire conversation history on Slack? What are the highest-value targets for hackers who'd like to compromise the Slack network?

  • What progress have you made on end-to-end encryption for Slack messages?

  • Is there a way to store the data where a compromise would not allow a hacker to access every message for every company in your system? Say you had three different datastore designs.

Uber/Lyft

  • Your companies store a massive amount of data on where users have been and where they are going. If exposed, this data could be used to embarrass people - why is this married Congressman requesting a ride from outside a gay bar, or a hotel in the middle of the day?

  • What options do users have for removing their trip history from your site?

  • What employees can access user data, and under what circumstances? What tools do you have for anonymizing data that's not viewed in aggregate?

  • Many Trump voters cited a feeling of being left behind as a reason to vote for him. Uber drivers are 1099 contractors, which means you are prohibited from providing them with training. What responsibility do corporations have to put their workers on an upwards career path?

  • Many of your 1099 contractors get health care from the government, or on government-mandated exchanges. These exchanges are being threatened by Republican governors in many states, and Republicans in Congress. What responsibility does Uber have to work for healthcare for its drivers?

  • Your legal page says "We generally require a valid request issued in accordance with applicable law before we can process private requests for information." What does "generally" mean in this context? If China passes a law that says "we can ask for everything," would Uber comply?

  • You've taken money from Saudi Arabia's public investment arm. Would you be say no to that money if the Saudi Arabian government asked for data on customers as a condition of the deal?

Stripe/Braintree

  • You collected millions of dollars in revenue from the Trump campaign in 2016. If Trump acts like an authoritarian in office, or severely restricts the rights of minorities or immigrants, will you support his campaign again in 2020?

  • Does Stripe receive requests from law enforcement? What is your policy for responding to subpoenas?

  • If Stripe processes a credit card payment, who can see the record of that transaction? Who should be able to see it, and/or remove it?

Twilio

  • Do you encrypt messages passing from datacenter to datacenter?

Facebook

  • Historically newspapers and other media organizations have had a strong understanding of their role in promoting democracy and enforcing accountability from the government and our business leaders. Facebook has become a very important part of how people figure out what's going on in the world around them. What responsibility does Facebook have to ensure people have a mostly-correct view of the world? Should Facebook have a role in promoting democracy and in rejecting authoritarianism?

  • Facebook tells advertisers that their ads can change users' minds. But Facebook also insists that the algorithms it uses to show information didn't sway the US election (or overseas elections). Which is it?

  • Has Facebook responded to queries from governments on the lines of "Muslims/blacks/immigrants living in state/city/county X"?

  • Facebook's current policy is to censor/restrict content according to local laws. If a law was passed to restrict speech in the United States, would Facebook comply?

  • Does Facebook encrypt data being sent from datacenter to datacenter?

Twitter

  • What line would Donald Trump have to cross for you to suspend or ban his account?

In sum

You are the most likely agent of change at your company. A lot of stuff may happen in the next four years and it's good to think and declare now, when things are relatively sane, what you'll agree to do or not do, because in the aftermath of another 9/11, or similar event, you may be asked to do a lot.

I've laid out my own consulting ethics guide here.

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Election Guide (Part 2) – CA Ballot Propositions, State Senate, more

This is Part 2 of my voter guide. Part 1 covers the 24 San Francisco ballot propositions and city supervisor races.

The deadline to register to vote in California is October 24. I highly recommend you sign up. Click here to register to vote.

A few notes I cover in more detail in Part 1: More housing is the most important issue for me on this year's ballot, and by default I vote "no" on ballot propositions, since I think we shouldn't be deciding policy by statewide or citywide ballot.

California State Initiatives

Prop 51 (School Bonds): Yes

The real story here is that Proposition 13, passed decades ago, limits the state's ability to collect property taxes, enriching a generation of homeowners at everyone else's expense. This is why our schools constantly need more money.

I also wish the Legislature should be able to figure out its budget and prioritize and we didn't have to vote on things like this. I don't feel too strongly in either direction.

Prop 52 (Medi-cal): No

Hospitals pay a required fee to the CA State government (about $5 billion a year). When the State allocates this money for Medi-cal, the federal government provides about $4 billion in matching funds.

In the past the State has diverted some of the hospital fee money to the general fund which hurts 2x - not only does Medical miss out on the fee money, it misses out on the federal matching funds.

This measure would require the hospital fee money to be spent on Medical, which seems reasonable.

I'm upset that we have to vote on this; I would rather the legislature do the right thing. I'm also upset that this amends the state Constitution; I don't think the Constitution should get into the specifics of how things should be funded. I also think we should be trying to loosen the hands of our legislators, not restrict them further, and that they're as aware of the cost of giving up matching funds as voters are.

Prop 53 (Voter Approval for Megaprojects): No

I'm really torn on this. On the one hand, you are putting voters in charge of deciding even more things about what the government does. On the other, megaprojects frequently fail and the majority come in at least 50% over budget (high speed rail is only the most prominent example of this). Politicians also like to build big things so they can have a "legacy" and the history of big things lately has been really mixed - see high speed rail and also the Bay Bridge which has required frequent fixes and may be cracking.

Our politicians might not make great decisions with our money but I think voters would make worse decisions. Note voters approved the first $9 billion of a high speed rail project whose final cost may be upwards of $60 billion, when no real funding source for the other $51 billion was in sight. This would also increase uncertainty and delay the start of any project until the next statewide vote.

Prop 54 (72 Hr Bill Freeze): Yes

I am unhappy that this bill amends the Constitution. But apparently there are numerous instances of state legislators shoehorning special-interest-friendly language at the last second.

There was that budget measure that limited the amount of reserves local school districts could maintain as a cushion against lean times (a gift to the teachers union, which wanted to make those dollars available for immediate spending); the 2009 waiver of environmental rules for a downtown Los Angeles football stadium (on the argument that time was of the essence to secure an NFL team ... the project never broke ground); or the 2011 bill that Democrats rushed through to force all voter initiatives on the November ballot, thus breaking a deal with Republicans to put spending reform on the June 2012 ballot.

Prop 55 (Extending Income Taxes on High Earners): No

The share of tax each resident pays is something that the Legislature should resolve. I also agree with the Chronicle that this measure will increase the variability of revenue in the state budget, which isn't great.

Prop 56 ($2 Cigarette Tax): Yes

In general taxes are a good way to discourage behavior you don't want. Cigarettes are unhealthy and incur significant spillover costs due to secondhand smoke, and the additional burden on the healthcare system from insuring/treating patients with cancer and emphysema.

I would have preferred for the Legislature to vote for this tax as well.

Prop 57 (Parole): No

Many people are serving sentences that are too long and the prisons are overcrowded. But the language is confusing and I don't see why the Legislature can't pass legislation to deal with this issue.

Prop 58 (Local Language Education Flexibility): Yes

Apparently this is on the ballot because it repeals a previous voter-passed initiative from 1998. The worry is that voting Yes will allow students to graduate without mastering English at all, which isn't good. But it seems like all of parents, students and schools want students to learn English, they just don't agree that "all English classes, all the time" is the best way to do it.

Prop 59 (Citizens United): No

I'm voting No because this is a waste of energy and we shouldn't be voting on things like this, not based on any opinion about Citizens United.

Prop 60 (Porn Stars Wear Condoms): No

The practical effect of this bill would be to shift the porn industry in California to Nevada or another nearby state. The porn industry also requires performers to get tested every two weeks. There are problems that probably deserve more scrutiny - the exploitation of performers in some scenarios - but it's not clear that this initiative is the vehicle or the method to fix them.

Prop 61 (Drug Prices): No

I agree with the Chronicle that the right solution here is to make drug prices (and the rates each agency pays) public, instead of ensuring that the prices Medi-cal and the VA pay are the same. I also think there are legitimate concerns about reduced access to necessary drugs and the ability of the Legislature to override this initiative if there are unforeseen problems.

Prop 62 (Repeal Death Penalty): Yes

Prop 66 (Quicken Death Penalty): No

Leaving aside whether it is ethical to put someone to death for crimes they have committed, I am against the death penalty for the following, more practical reasons:

  • It's entirely possible we have put an innocent person to death, an monstrous miscarriage of justice that should never be allowed to happen.

  • It's argued that the death penalty deters people from violent crimes. But there's a lot of evidence that deterrence depends much more on the severity and the certainty of punishment. Death, if it comes at all for death row inmates, is applied years or decades after the fact.

  • There are legitimate concerns about whether execution can be done "humanely" and a number of states have had problems sourcing the drugs used to put people to death.

  • It's expensive to execute someone, both in pure cost and in the cost of the appeals process - a death sentence must be appealed to the Supreme Court.

Repeal would also save California a significant amount of money.

Prop 63 (Ammunition): No

The biggest effect of a Yes vote would add additional charges for people who would like to buy ammunition. I don't think we need to vote on this.

Prop 64 (Marijuana Legalization): No Position

In general I'd prefer for drugs to be legalized and heavily regulated + taxed, instead of illegal, especially when you consider the potential revenue. I also think criminal sentences for possessing or distributing marijuana should be smaller than they are (the initiative provides for this). However, I'm concerned that marijuana is only as expensive as it is because it is illegal. Marijuana is not an expensive crop, and if it becomes legal to grow the price per ounce could go really low. I'm worried the flat taxes per ounce are too low, and the 15% sales tax should be a flat tax or a guaranteed minimum price per ounce.

The results on public health so far are mixed; one study reports a 7% increase in traffic fatalities for every 1% increase in marijuana consumption. The penalties for drunk drivers are not currently high enough and I'm worried we don't know how to measure whether a driver is high.

On top of this I am worried that the Legislature won't have the flexibility to override a state initiative; any amendments require a 2/3 vote.

Prop 65 (Money from Paper Bags to Environment): No

This directs revenue from grocery bag fees to specific environmental causes. I don't think we should put additional constraints on where the Legislature should direct money, and I don't think we should pass things by state initiative.

Prop 66: No (see #62 above)

Prop 67 (Affirm Plastic Bag Ban): Yes

Proposition 67 is a referendum on the existing bag law (10 cents a bag); a "Yes" vote says "Yes, please keep the law the way it is." I prefer the Legislature to write laws, not California voters, so I am voting Yes.

Superior Court

Victor Hwang, who has experience working as a public defender.

Board of Education

Stevon Cook, Matt Haney, Rachel Norton, Jill Wynns.

Community College Board

Rafael Mandelman, Amy Bacharach, Alex Randolph, Shanell Williams.

Bart Director

Gwyneth Borden, who has been endorsed by the Chronicle and is open to a ban on BART strikes.

California State Senate: Scott Wiener

This is one of the most important races on the ballot due to the difference in quality between the candidates. Wiener is running against Jane Kim, who has opposed numerous housing projects, and is sponsoring some of the poorer propositions on the city ballot. Scott Wiener understands how to build more housing in San Francisco.

Kim also recently sponsored "legacy status" for Luxor Cab Company, which gives them a permanent subsidy from the City of San Francisco. This is a terrific waste of money compounded by the fact the benefit won't do anything for the company's cab drivers, only its 20 or so full time employees. Vote for Scott Wiener.

California State Representative: David Chiu

Chiu is running against Matthew Del Carlo, who does not appear to have policy positions listed anywhere publicly; it's not clear what he would run for, or do in office.

Chiu slammed Governor Brown for including $0 in affordable housing in this year's budget. The housing measures were tied to the Governor's "by right" housing legislation, which would have done more to lower rent/housing prices in San Francisco than any other legislative measure in a decade. It's not clear whether Chiu supported or opposed this measure.

Chiu is running against Matthew Del Carlo, who doesn't have any information about his policy positions listed publicly. I reached out to him multiple times asking him to post these publicly and he's refused to do so.

United States Senate: Kamala Harris

Harris is running for Barbara Boxer's old seat. We really need a California Senator who understands the technology industry and is willing to fight for it; who understands you can't just make a "golden key" to read messages that only the US government can access, as in Dianne Feinstein's horrible encryption bill.

President

Hillary Clinton.

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San Francisco Voting Guide – Propositions and Supervisors

I think this is useful and the ballot's complicated so I wanted to share how I'm voting this year. I used several sources to compile this guide:

  • The SF Chronicle's endorsements - they follow these issues every day.

  • The ballot book mailed to every voter, especially the text of the law and the main pro/con arguments.

I highly recommend voting by mail. You can feel too rushed or disorganized in the ballot booth, especially in this election, when there are so many things to vote on.

San Francisco Ballot Initiatives

The #1 issue for me in this election is housing. People make a fundamental mistake when analyzing the SF housing market; they see lots of increased demand (maybe 10%) and little increased supply (maybe 1%), and conclude "We're building housing but prices are still rising; the new housing must be causing the price increases." In reality if demand is outpacing supply you'd expect to see prices rise and supply rise, and the new housing stock is preventing the price from rising even faster than it currently is!

I also see a lot of hypocrisy. SF is full of liberals, and social mobility is a traditional liberal plank. In one of the hottest economies in the country, high rents are preventing poor people from moving here and establishing a foothold. Lowering the price of housing in our fastest growing economies is a moral imperative.

San Francisco added 5000 new units this year, and SF condos are 8% cheaper this year than last year. The market rate of rent also slowed from its normal double-digit increase. We need to build on this progress.

I want there to be more housing in San Francisco, of all shapes and sizes. In this election, anything that makes housing more complicated to build is a No; anything that makes housing easier is a Yes. Affordable housing is admirable but isn't a full answer, and gets more expensive as market rent rises. The easiest path to more affordable housing is to lower market rent.

I'll say two other things; in general I am opposed to deciding things by ballot initiative that could be resolved by the Board of Supervisors or the State Senate, since election votes tend to tie the hands of our elected officials, and can require supermajorities to unwind. So all other things being equal I am more likely to vote No on any given ballot measure.

I am also generally opposed to measures that set aside percentages of the budget, or specific dollar amounts, for any cause, no matter how noble. They reduce the flexibility of our elected officials to balance a budget, which is why we elect them in the first place. The percentage of the city budget each interest group would like to reserve for itself would well exceed 100%.

Measure A (School Bond): Yes

Measure B ($99 Parcel Tax for City College): Yes

Measure C (Repurpose Earthquake Bonds for Housing): Yes

The City is sitting on $261 million in unspent earthquake safety bonds and would like to redirect it to housing. This will increase the supply of housing.

Measure D (Short Term Appointment Rules): No

Some replacement public officials are named by the mayor to replace someone else who left their term. This measure would prevent them from running for a full term. I see no reason why appointees should not be allowed to run for a full term. The SF Chronicle opposes this measure.

Measure E (Trees Fund): No

$19 million per year for trees. In the words of the SF Chronicle, "San Francisco is running a near $10 billion budget. The civic bill for tree care is pegged at $20 million. There should be room for this expense without carving out a program that can't be changed."

Measure F (Youth Vote): No

This would let 16 and 17 year olds vote in local elections.

Measure G (Police Oversight): Yes

This would grant additional powers to a citizen review board. I think police organizations have trouble regulating themselves and this is a good step in the right direction.

Measure H (Public Advocate): No

This creates a new elected position with no power to do anything. "It's posturing minus responsibility, a dream job in the political world," according to the Chronicle.

Measure I (Senior Citizen Fund): No

This measure would set aside $38 million a year for programs for senior citizens and adults with disabilities. I support programs for senior citizens, but would rather our elected officials make decisions about the budget, instead of voters.

Measure J (Homeless Housing and Services): No Position

Measure K (Sales Tax Increase): Yes

In general I'd like to see more parcel tax increases and fewer sales tax increases, since the former hit property owners, who have been granted great gifts by Prop 13. They are also politically unpalatable.

Measure L (Muni Board): No

This would let the Board of Supervisors appoint three of the seven members of the Muni Agency. I don't see why the mayor shouldn't appoint members of the Muni Agency.

Measure M (New Housing Committee): No

This would add another layer of approval in the housing approval process, which would make it more difficult to add housing. I am against measures that would make it more difficult to add housing.

Measure N (Noncitizen Resident Voting): No

I'm sympathetic but this would likely be subject to a legal challenge.

Measure O (Office Exemptions): Yes

The city limits new office construction to 950,000 square feet. This is a silly rule, which makes it hard for startups, among others, to rent in San Francisco. This would exempt Candlestick Point development from that square footage rule.

I would like to see similar rules applied to speed housing growth, but there you go.

Measure P (Competitive Bidding for Affordable Housing): No

This makes it more difficult to build housing by discouraging projects that can't get at least three bids. From the Chronicle:

Prop. P obliges the city to seek three bids when offering city land to affordable housing builders. But City Hall already beats the bushes for multiple contenders. By one count, the last 10 projects had at least two bidders. Locking in a three-bid minimum could kill projects which don’t attract that threshold number of entrants. The measure has the potential to stop promising deals, the last thing San Francisco needs.

Measure Q (Prohibit Tent Placement): No

This wouldn't have much practical effect, and won't really help much to address the shortage of beds.

Measure R (Neighborhood Crime Unit): No

This would allocate 3% of the police force for neighborhood crime. Even if this is an issue that could be addressed by this allocation, I don't think the right answer is for the voters to make allocation decisions for the police department.

Measure S (Hotel Money Allocation): No

This would allocate the 8% hotel tax for the arts and for the homeless. In general I'm against allocating revenue for specific purposes; this isn't an exception. I doubt this will matter; the Chronicle has no position and there are no arguments against the measure in the ballot book.

Measure T (Lobbying Rules): Yes

This would add tighter restrictions on what lobbyists are allowed to do and spend to influence votes.

Measure U (Median Income): No

This would help middle income families qualify for affordable housing at the expense of lower income families. Per [the Chronicle][measure-u], "The guidelines for competitive bidding and income qualifications are better left to a process of legislative hearings, study and political compromise that balances the competing goals and concerns. These are not issues to be settled at the ballot box."

The solution here is more housing of all stripes, and hopefully market rate housing that is affordable to middle income families. This wouldn't help.

Measure V (Soda Tax): Yes

Charging a higher price for something is a good way to discourage people from getting it. This strategy has been used very successfully with cigarettes, which cause cancer in others via secondhand smoke; raising the price of cigarettes makes it an expensive habit. The fact that this raises money for the City is an ancillary benefit. The goal of this bill is to make sugary drinks more expensive and non-sugary drinks cheaper by comparison.

I'm also dismayed by the efforts of bill opponents, who have sent volumes of mail and mislead when they call this a "grocery tax." It's a 1 cent per ounce tax on sugary drinks.

Measure W (Higher City Transfer Taxes): No Opinion

The arguments for this measure all seem to say "this will help make City College free", which is very odd since it seems the tax money will go into the General Fund.

The arguments against point out that this also applies to rent controlled buildings and large buildings.

Measure X (Arts Use in New Buildings): No

This would add restrictions if you want to build housing in an area that was formerly used for the arts or certain types of small businesses. We shouldn't be voting on this, and it makes it more difficult to build housing, maybe more so than any other measure on the ballot.

San Francisco Board of Supervisors

District 1: Marjan Philhour

Marjan wants to build more housing of all shapes and sizes to address the area's housing crisis. She's also been endorsed by the Chronicle.

District 3: No Recommendation

Aaron Peskin is the incumbent who is going to win going away. Peskin has held up new housing on several occasions. He's also supported symbolic efforts to oppose Governor Brown's by right legislation, which would have done more for housing growth than any other proposal in a long time. Peskin also believes that you should only be allowed to exceed existing density limits if you build 100% affordable housing, which is a great way to grandstand for affordable housing while ensuring no new housing gets built.

He is being opposed by Tim Donnelly, who supports "respecting building limits", increasing parking, expanding rent control, and "giving residents a voice" because changes have been made "despite overwhelming opposition from the local community." It does not sound like Mr Donnelly is in favor of more housing.

District 5: No Recommendation

London Breed voted against Governor Brown's by right legislation, which would have helped increase the market-rate and affordable housing stock in San Francisco by letting developers build any project that followed local zoning rules and had 20% affordable housing. She also supports affordability requirements that make it difficult to build more housing.

She is being opposed by Dean Preston, who is running against "rent gouging", and supports an "anti-demolition" ordinance for "historic" buildings. Mr. Preston would not make it easier to build more housing in San Francisco.

District 7: Joel Engardio

Engardio is running against Norman Yee, who supports CEQA, a law that is frequently abused to oppose housing. Engardio supports building more housing. "I also know that building more housing will help middle income residents become homeowners -- and we want to keep families from leaving San Francisco. Restricting supply only drives prices higher," he writes.

District 9: No Endorsement

Hillary Ronen pledges to "fight for an affordable San Francisco" and wants to build 5000 units of affordable housing in 10 years. There was a very easy way to have accomplished 5000 units of affordable housing - support Governor Brown's by right housing legislation, which would have guaranteed that 20% of every new building in San Francisco would have been affordable. Her boss, David Campos, voted against it. She also wants to leverage state and federal funds to build affordable housing. Her boss's vote against by right legislation helped remove $400 million for affordable housing from the state budget.

District 11: No Endorsement

None of the candidates in either of these districts seem to agree that building more housing of any shape and size is the best way to alleviate our affordability crisis for everyone. Notably bad is District 11's Kim Alvarenga, running on a platform of "more parking" and "100% affordable housing", which is very difficult to build.

Coming Soon!

California State Propositions, BART director, judicial elections, State Senate and US Senate.

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