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Interesting tidbits from the article: > San Francisco openly admits to not following a state law requiring certain permit processing times > the state has yet

Interesting tidbits from the article: > San Francisco openly admits to not following a state law requiring certain permit processing times > the state has yet to bring a lawsuit against the city over project denials I like the idea of amassing money that can be used as a threat of a lawsuit. This is the real power that many people do have; this power is possible for all of us, collectively. We can and should influence our elected officials through legal maneuvers, if other efforts fail. It just makes sense.

barbazoo 4y ago
With wealth being so unevenly distributed this is just another way for the rich to get what they want and protect their class.
- actually_a_dog 4y ago
  That's right. I'd rather see it be made possible for average citizens to sue whatever appropriate government agency rather than just allowing people with money to do so. That route takes a left turn at "one person one vote" onto "one dollar one vote." It's the literal opposite of democracy in action.
  - shlurpy 4y ago
    That's one of the purposes of government regulatory agencies. Laws could be enforced entirely through courts, but regulators can fine on behalf of the ordinary people instead of those wealthy enough to sue.
Buttons840 4y ago
What happens in a lawsuit against the city? The city might have to pay, but this is basically the people paying themselves - tax payers pay the tax payers. If you sue the city and win, the judge orders the city to follow the law, and they still don't, do elected officials go to jail or something?
- shuckles 4y ago
  There are many avenues for enforcement, including and up to the state taking over the city's land use powers if they are unable to comply with state law. At that point, California could issue permits to build.
  - hindsightbias 4y ago
    Newsom would just appoint Willie Brown head of that board.
    - shuckles 4y ago
      There are a lot of friendlies in the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD), but NIMBYism tends to attenuate at higher levels of office since you can't simply move externalities outside your jurisdiction. Citywide officeholders in San Francisco itself tend to be pro-development; it's the district officeholders who have bad incentives.
- epistasis 4y ago
  There are zero consequences for elected officials that knowingly and willfully violate laws that constrain municipal actions. I've seen enough willfully block affordable housing in violation of law that I've looked several times. NIMBYs also encourage these sorts of lawsuits, because even if they know they will lose, these projects are 1) so close to not making sense that an affordable housing developer literally can not afford to fight for legal rights, and 2) there's a big fear that fighting the city legally will make all further building attempts by an affordable housing developer even more difficult and likely to fail. I have zero empathy or sympathy for my NIMBY neighbors that have been displacing so many people in my community after several years of trying to fight for affordable housing. People that are otherwise "nice" behave in the most amoral ways when it comes to excluding people from their neighborhoods. It's been very eye opening for me in a sad way.
  - enahs-sf 4y ago
    I was wondering this as well. Are individual supes indemnified from their actions taken while in office? In my mind I play out some RICO case takedown where they all get indicted in one fell swoop but surely this is impossible.
hedora 4y ago
I'd rather they spend the money on a ballot initiative that says they have a certain amount of time to reject a permit, and it simply issues (with a refund of the permit processing fees) if the deadline passes. To close the resulting loophole where they just reject all permits when they have a backlog, there would be automatic penalties for improperly rejected permits, with a floor of an after-tax value of 2 times the financial damage done to applicant; permit office pays legal fees.
- briandear 4y ago
  Just make it where any permit not rejected within 30 days is automatically approved.
  - zbrozek 4y ago
    All permits rejected at 29 days, status quo mostly remains.
  - hedora 4y ago
    Our local permit office would just reject things randomly. We had one office cheerfully let us know they didn't plan to spitefully bankrupt us, and half of a two-person department became visibly angry with our general contractor when the other person in that department told us how to tie his hands and force an approval. These shenanigans cost us rougly $500-1000 a day in insurance, interest, etc. They drug it out for about a year. The department that decided they liked us has bankrupted multiple people on our street. We'd have at least 5-10% more houses on our street (there is plenty of room) if not for them. California's state government has an alert on their website specifically listing various things that department did to us and pointing out they were illegal. Instead of suing, we kissed all the right asses in the right order, so now we have a house. Again, this is best case for interacting with them because they liked us, apparently. Based on conversations with neighbors, my level of satisfaction with this planning office is roughly median for the area, but our experience was way better than average. Marvin Heemeyer of Killdozer fame is a personal hero of mine now (Don't worrtly, I don't know how to weld. However, I do know how to make campaign donations and vote!): https://allthatsinteresting.com/marvin-heemeyer-killdozer https://allthatsinteresting.com/marvin-heemeyer-killdozer Missing from that article are apparently true allegations of direct financial conflicts of interest within the zoning commission, and him being forced to sell land so that one of their cronies could develop it instead. Also note that he fought them for over a decade. One of our state representatives is running for reelection on a plan to spend huge amounts of state/federal infrastructure money to bypass the office that likes to bankrupt people. 100's of familes will be forced off their land before the plan kicks in (assuming it passes). So, anyway, there needs to be harsh financial consequences for just rejecting permits for the heck of it. Ideally, promotions would be tied to correctly processing permit applications. That's probably illegal around here or something.
jjcon 4y ago
> I like the idea of amassing money that can be used as a threat of a lawsuit. I guess I don't really follow. What are they saying exactly? "Hey we have lots of money so listen to us" while simultaneously claiming SF isn't listening to them because the other side has even more money? If it is just a matter of money as they claim but they other side has more wouldn't it seem like they are just going to lose?
- nine_k 4y ago
  This means, AFAICT, "we have a war chest and will be able to continue litigation for as long as it takes".
  - jjcon 4y ago
    > She’s raised nearly $300,000 from a slate of high net worth individuals so far I umm... I seriously doubt that
Paul_S 4y ago
The only people who win are the lawyers who pocket money from both sides. And then money the state has to pay also come from your pocket in the end. Brilliant system, isn't it?
- azmodeus 4y ago
  Well it's a last resort but pretty effective due to bad PR and costs
  - mike50 4y ago
    The people who oppose development thrive on what normal people consider bad PR.
- mistrial9 4y ago
  many attorneys are part of some company of attorneys, which has side effects a.k.a. specialization; in some of the more contentious legal specialties there is public profiling of attorneys who represent certain sides of the argument. So .. perhaps the profession itself could be said to take money from both sides, but many times, in practice, an individual attorney does not or cannot...
- randyrand 4y ago
  taxpayers literally funding both sides of a legal battle… crazy world we live in.
nraynaud 4y ago
What about going after nimbys one by one?
proc0 4y ago
> We can and should influence our elected officials through legal maneuvers Ideally people should realize that voting for the other party will send the strongest signal to elected officials.

barbazoo 4y ago

With wealth being so unevenly distributed this is just another way for the rich to get what they want and protect their class.

actually_a_dog 4y ago
That's right. I'd rather see it be made possible for average citizens to sue whatever appropriate government agency rather than just allowing people with money to do so. That route takes a left turn at "one person one vote" onto "one dollar one vote." It's the literal opposite of democracy in action.
- shlurpy 4y ago
  That's one of the purposes of government regulatory agencies. Laws could be enforced entirely through courts, but regulators can fine on behalf of the ordinary people instead of those wealthy enough to sue.

Buttons840 4y ago

What happens in a lawsuit against the city? The city might have to pay, but this is basically the people paying themselves - tax payers pay the tax payers. If you sue the city and win, the judge orders the city to follow the law, and they still don't, do elected officials go to jail or something?

shuckles 4y ago
There are many avenues for enforcement, including and up to the state taking over the city's land use powers if they are unable to comply with state law. At that point, California could issue permits to build.
- hindsightbias 4y ago
  Newsom would just appoint Willie Brown head of that board.
  - shuckles 4y ago
    There are a lot of friendlies in the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD), but NIMBYism tends to attenuate at higher levels of office since you can't simply move externalities outside your jurisdiction. Citywide officeholders in San Francisco itself tend to be pro-development; it's the district officeholders who have bad incentives.
epistasis 4y ago
There are zero consequences for elected officials that knowingly and willfully violate laws that constrain municipal actions. I've seen enough willfully block affordable housing in violation of law that I've looked several times. NIMBYs also encourage these sorts of lawsuits, because even if they know they will lose, these projects are 1) so close to not making sense that an affordable housing developer literally can not afford to fight for legal rights, and 2) there's a big fear that fighting the city legally will make all further building attempts by an affordable housing developer even more difficult and likely to fail. I have zero empathy or sympathy for my NIMBY neighbors that have been displacing so many people in my community after several years of trying to fight for affordable housing. People that are otherwise "nice" behave in the most amoral ways when it comes to excluding people from their neighborhoods. It's been very eye opening for me in a sad way.
- enahs-sf 4y ago
  I was wondering this as well. Are individual supes indemnified from their actions taken while in office? In my mind I play out some RICO case takedown where they all get indicted in one fell swoop but surely this is impossible.

hedora 4y ago

I'd rather they spend the money on a ballot initiative that says they have a certain amount of time to reject a permit, and it simply issues (with a refund of the permit processing fees) if the deadline passes. To close the resulting loophole where they just reject all permits when they have a backlog, there would be automatic penalties for improperly rejected permits, with a floor of an after-tax value of 2 times the financial damage done to applicant; permit office pays legal fees.

briandear 4y ago
Just make it where any permit not rejected within 30 days is automatically approved.
- zbrozek 4y ago
  All permits rejected at 29 days, status quo mostly remains.
- hedora 4y ago
  Our local permit office would just reject things randomly. We had one office cheerfully let us know they didn't plan to spitefully bankrupt us, and half of a two-person department became visibly angry with our general contractor when the other person in that department told us how to tie his hands and force an approval. These shenanigans cost us rougly $500-1000 a day in insurance, interest, etc. They drug it out for about a year. The department that decided they liked us has bankrupted multiple people on our street. We'd have at least 5-10% more houses on our street (there is plenty of room) if not for them. California's state government has an alert on their website specifically listing various things that department did to us and pointing out they were illegal. Instead of suing, we kissed all the right asses in the right order, so now we have a house. Again, this is best case for interacting with them because they liked us, apparently. Based on conversations with neighbors, my level of satisfaction with this planning office is roughly median for the area, but our experience was way better than average. Marvin Heemeyer of Killdozer fame is a personal hero of mine now (Don't worrtly, I don't know how to weld. However, I do know how to make campaign donations and vote!): https://allthatsinteresting.com/marvin-heemeyer-killdozer https://allthatsinteresting.com/marvin-heemeyer-killdozer Missing from that article are apparently true allegations of direct financial conflicts of interest within the zoning commission, and him being forced to sell land so that one of their cronies could develop it instead. Also note that he fought them for over a decade. One of our state representatives is running for reelection on a plan to spend huge amounts of state/federal infrastructure money to bypass the office that likes to bankrupt people. 100's of familes will be forced off their land before the plan kicks in (assuming it passes). So, anyway, there needs to be harsh financial consequences for just rejecting permits for the heck of it. Ideally, promotions would be tied to correctly processing permit applications. That's probably illegal around here or something.

jjcon 4y ago

> I like the idea of amassing money that can be used as a threat of a lawsuit. I guess I don't really follow. What are they saying exactly? "Hey we have lots of money so listen to us" while simultaneously claiming SF isn't listening to them because the other side has even more money? If it is just a matter of money as they claim but they other side has more wouldn't it seem like they are just going to lose?

nine_k 4y ago
This means, AFAICT, "we have a war chest and will be able to continue litigation for as long as it takes".
- jjcon 4y ago
  > She’s raised nearly $300,000 from a slate of high net worth individuals so far I umm... I seriously doubt that

Paul_S 4y ago

The only people who win are the lawyers who pocket money from both sides. And then money the state has to pay also come from your pocket in the end. Brilliant system, isn't it?

azmodeus 4y ago
Well it's a last resort but pretty effective due to bad PR and costs
- mike50 4y ago
  The people who oppose development thrive on what normal people consider bad PR.
mistrial9 4y ago
many attorneys are part of some company of attorneys, which has side effects a.k.a. specialization; in some of the more contentious legal specialties there is public profiling of attorneys who represent certain sides of the argument. So .. perhaps the profession itself could be said to take money from both sides, but many times, in practice, an individual attorney does not or cannot...
randyrand 4y ago
taxpayers literally funding both sides of a legal battle… crazy world we live in.

nraynaud 4y ago

What about going after nimbys one by one?

proc0 4y ago

> We can and should influence our elected officials through legal maneuvers Ideally people should realize that voting for the other party will send the strongest signal to elected officials.