(Part of my March 3, 2020 voter guide)
California Proposition 13: Yes
Prop 13 2020 (not to be confused with Prop 13 1978) is a bond for public education facilities. This includes K-12 public schools and the public postsecondary system of community colleges, California State University (CSU) system and University of California (UC) system.
Prop 13 does a few other things. It allows local education districts to raise more money through bonds by raising property taxes. And it reduces or eliminates education impact fees on new multifamily housing.
In general I support bonds that seem like sound investments. This was approved by the legislature and so passes a sniff test. The reduction on impact fees will make housing less expensive to build. This should help increase housing supply and lower housing costs.
The opposition argument is that schools should budget better not be able to raise local property taxes. I’m not sure that this is valid. Costs are increasing a lot and tax revenue is not increasing because property taxes are based on value at purchase time, not market value (due to Prop 13 1978).
https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_13,_School_and_College_Facilities_Bond_(March_2020)
San Francisco Proposition A: Yes
Prop A is a bond to invest in improving facilities at City College San Francisco. In general I favor investing in educational facilities.
This is not great timing though as City College is facing budget deficits and is cutting services, raising questions about the financial stability of the institution.
https://www.spur.org/voter-guide/san-francisco-2020-03/prop-a-city-college-facilities-bond
San Francisco Proposition B: Yes
Prop B is a bond to invest in earthquake safety and emergency services. This is a regularly scheduled bond that replaces a bond that is just expiring, so there would be no net difference in property taxes if Prop B passes.
Yes to this. For example, Prop B helps fund the water infrastructure that we need to put out fires on the west side in case of an earthquake. The city’s civil grand jury found out that there is no resilient infrastructure to tackle fires that may break out after an earthquake in the Sunset.
Pretty much everyone who matters has endorsed yes on this bond, so yes.
https://www.spur.org/voter-guide/san-francisco-2020-03/prop-b-earthquake-bond
San Francisco Proposition C: Yes
Prop C literally affects less than 100 people whose employer was acquired by city government. It makes their benefits the same as other city workers. This seems like a trivial thing to put on the ballot, but city employee benefits are guaranteed in the city charter so we have to do it.
https://www.spur.org/voter-guide/san-francisco-2020-03/prop-c-retiree-health-benefits
San Francisco Proposition D: No
Prop D would tax commercial storefronts that are vacant for half a year, up to $1000 per linear foot of storefront. There are some exemptions for permit applications, construction, or natural disaster.
I was originally yes on this but then I flipped to no. Prop D aims to address storefront vacancies in San Francisco. In some commercial districts, ground-floor commercial vacancy rates go up to 10–20%. People say that this is not good for business or for residents who want to have amenities in their neighborhood.
The authors of Prop D believe that the cause is that landlords are keeping places empty and hoping that rents increase in the near team before they lock in leases that last 5–10 years.
But there actually isn’t much evidence that this is true beyond anecdotes. The city’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development stated:
Neighborhood organizers, merchants, and some recent articles have observed that some long-standing vacancies are caused by landlords holding out for higher rents or a desired type of tenant[…] However, it is unclear whether landlords being unwilling to rent their properties is limited to a few highly visible cases. Brokers interviewed for this study do not believe this trend is widespread, if it happens at all.
OEWD points to other reasons for long-term vacancies: spaces have a challenging layout; spaces are large and designed for chain stores; buildings require rehab or historic preservation mandates; expensive permitting processes (p68 of this PDF: “State of the Retail Sector: Challenges and Opportunities for San Francisco’s Neighborhood Commercial Districts”, 2018).
North Beach Neighbors believes that their neighborhood’s vacancies are driven by permitting and zoning. The SF Chronicle’s Shwanika Narayan and Roland Li wrote in 2019 that North Beach’s commercial vacancies were due to seismic retrofitting and excessive bureaucracy.
I think Prop D could help on the margins, but it doesn’t address any of the other issues that storefronts lie vacant. My gut feeling is that the permitting and zoning barriers are the largest reason that storefronts sit empty. The tax isn’t backed on data showing that this would meaningfully address commercial vacancies. And there is no mechanism to amend the tax, except through another ballot measure. I fear unintended consequences.
One recent example of unintended consequences: The same author of Prop D passed a ban on city use of facial recognition technology, in the name of privacy and civil liberties. This seemed good, but then the City Attorney ruled that it banned government use of iPhones because it carried facial recognition unlock technology. The law was amended. But our legislature cannot amend Prop D unless they push another ordinance to the ballot.
https://www.spur.org/voter-guide/san-francisco-2020-03/prop-d-vacancy-tax
San Francisco Proposition E: No
In 1986, voters passed Prop M, which caps how much office space San Francisco can build at about 1,000,000 square feet per year. (For reference, the flagship Salesforce Tower has 1,600,000 square feet of office space.) Separately, San Francisco has a goal of how many homes it builds that are affordable to low-income households (the state backed Regional Housing Needs Allocation). Prop E would further restrict how much office space can be built in proportion to how well SF meets its goals on building low-income affordable housing.
The proponents of Prop E say that office space creates jobs drives up demand for housing, including for low-income housing. Since we are in a dire shortage of low-income housing, we should limit new office development and job creation in proportion to our low-income housing.
Prop E supporters say that it will bring “balance” to San Francisco, but what that really means is that they want the city to have less office space. This measure does next to nothing to build more affordable housing by tackling zoning, process, or funding. San Francisco has never met its RHNA goals for low-income housing, and this is definitely going to hit office construction. What’s more, Prop E could result in building less low-income housing. New office space helps fund low-income housing through impact fees. The City Economist published a report projecting that Prop E could create a office/low-income housing death spiral where less new office space reduces new low-income housing, which shrinks new office space even more, which reduces new low-income housing, and so on.
This is a deeply cynical bill. If the city builds less office space, then there will be higher office rents, and less diversity of business in San Francisco. More office space will be built in neighboring cities, and SF will have more housing demand for people who want in the city, but none of the business tax revenue.
I think the results of Prop E will be building less low-income housing and for SF’s jobs to become even more tilted towards high-income professions.
https://www.spur.org/voter-guide/san-francisco-2020-03/prop-e-limits-office-development
