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Planning staff presents 2005 housing inventory; public questions data and counting methods
Summary
Planning Department staff summarized the 2005 housing inventory, noting a surge in larger projects and a concentration of new units on the city's eastern side. Public commenters and commissioners pressed staff on data inconsistencies and how rehab and acquisition counts are credited toward state targets.
Claudia Flores, planning department housing analyst, presented the department's 2005 housing inventory on Oct. 26, describing citywide trends in new housing production and the data sources used to compile the report. Flores said the report tracks annual net gains citywide by zoning, planning district and building type and highlights trends such as a concentration of new housing in eastern San Francisco and an increase in large projects that pushed totals higher this year.
The presentation stressed methodology and limits: the inventory reports new units added to the housing stock and lists rehabilitation and acquisition activity separately. Planning staff explained that state rules allow jurisdictions to count some acquisitions and rehabs toward housing-element production targets (up to 25% credit for rehab/acquisition as described by Theresa Ojeda, planning staff), but that rehab units are not counted as full net new units in the inventory totals.
Public commenters challenged data accuracy and timeliness. Speaker Sue Hester cited apparent mismatches in project lists and dates and asked why some projects appear as both "authorized for construction" and "pending" (Hester said this at the hearing). Planning staff acknowledged the difficulty of tracking thousands of projects across DBI, the Assessor and other sources and said they were improving data flows and would provide more granular pipeline breakdowns on request. Doug Shoemaker of the Mayor's Office of Housing said the office and planning staff are coordinating on pipeline counts and that some figures reported to the commission reflect different counting rules used for performance measures.
Commissioners asked staff follow-ups. Members requested clearer breakdowns of pipeline units by affordability level and an explanation of how rehabilitation and acquisition actions are credited toward the housing-element targets. Planning staff said they would return with that detail and noted the housing inventory remains a statistical record rather than a performance evaluation; policy assessments occur in subsequent planning steps.
