San Francisco needs MORE HOUSING and FEWER CARS. Transportation for a Livable City is making it happen. Read about it in the first issue of our digital newsletter.

The Housing Yes! project

TLC is working to encourage more housing at more affordable prices. TLC's focus is to encourage greater density in areas well-served by transit and to eliminate or reduce the expensive and inappropriate requirements that housing developers also build parking garages.

TLC's Housing Yes! project promotes updated zoning policies that will allow developers to build more affordable units. It will improve neighborhoods by providing more customers for neighborhood-serving retail. It will reduce pressure on suburban sprawl, and permit more people to live where they can walk, bike, or take transit for most of their daily needs.

Legalizing new secondary units. If you own a house with a garage or a shed, and a relative or friend needs a place to stay, it is currently illegal to convert some of your unused space to comfortable and safe living environment. Despite our terrible housing crisis, Planning Department officials will actually force you to destroy a perfectly good home if it's an illegal secondary unit! Allowing secondary units is one of the best ways to provide more affordable housing. It doesn't even require new construction. If residents of new secondary units are prohibited from getting residential parking permits, we can even guarantee that traffic and parking problems will not increase.

Supervisor Aaron Peskin has introduced legislation that will do just this. TLC supports that legislation and asks you to support it as well. Read more about it in this article by Supervisor Peskin in the San Francisco Apartment Association newsletter: livablecity.org/peskin.html.

Reducing parking requirements. Today, if a housing developer wants to build a 100-unit apartment building to replace a vacant building near Market Street, say, that developer is required to build a 100-car parking garage, increasing the cost of each unit by $30,000 to $80,000 (depending on location and type) and adding to traffic congestion on streets where transit is supposed to have priority. Even though only 30% of tenants in the city's most walkable, dense neighborhoods own cars, builders are required to construct parking as if 100% of tenants owned cars. TLC wants to change the rules to permit developers to build less parking. We are meeting with the Board of Supervisors this month to seek a sponsor for this legislation. If you have any ideas, please contact Jeremy Nelson at jeremy@livablecity.org. For more information, visit SPUR's research paper on the topic at www.spur.org/spurhsgpkg.html.

The Transportation Choices Project

TLC works to strengthen the city's existing sustainable transportation advocates, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, Walk San Francisco, Rescue Muni, and City CarShare. In its role as fiscal sponsor, TLC has disbursed $60,000 to the SFBC and $10,000 to Walk San Francisco so far this year. TLC is working specifically in the following ways:

Keeping scooters off the sidewalk. The Segway company is fighting hard to permit their 12.5 mph scooters on San Francisco's sidewalks. Scooters belong on the streets. The Bicycle Coalition supports the use of Segways on the streets, including in bicycle lanes. The SFBC, Walk San Francisco, San Francisco Planning & Urban Research, and TLC are united in their opposition to Segways on the sidewalks. To register your opposition, send a note to Chris Daly thanking him for introducing legislation banning Segways on the sidewalk. e-mail: Chris_Daly@sf.gov.

Building the citywide bicycle network. The Bicycle Coalition has a $226,000 grant from the Transportation Authority to work with community stakeholders to plan each segment of the citywide bicycle network, while the Department of Parking & Traffic has a slightly larger grant to analyze the various alternatives and propose a network. However, the DPT and SFBC are concerned that the planning process will generate more feasible proposals for bicycle lanes and paths than the DPT has the resources to analyze. TLC advocates that DPT should increase the budget by $100,000 to make sure the network can be fully analyzed.

Organization Building

TLC needs resources to be a strong voice. Fortunately, the city's philanthropic community understands that linking transportation to land use has great potential to create a more livable city. TLC has received grants from the Goldman Fund, the Evelyn & Walter Haas, Jr. Fund, the Lane Family Charitable Trust, the Rose Foundation, the Hellman Family Fund, and the San Francisco Foundation.

TLC needs to raise only $12,000 from individuals by the end of this year to be fully funded going into 2003 and able to focus on implementing our livable city agenda! That's only 120 people each giving $100, or 240 giving $50. You can contribute to TLC's Livable City Fund by sending an email to Heather Thomson, at heather@livablecity.org.

Strategic planning. TLC's short term agenda is expressed in this newsletter. But where will be five years from now? And how will we get there? TLC will conduct a strategic planning workshop on Saturday, Dec. 7, by invitation. If you're interested in attending, please email Dave Snyder at dave@livablecity.org.

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