Steven Buss, who lives near 24th and Potrero streets, noted his approval of the appearance, but asked if the building could get a little taller using the city and state programs that allow additional height for new buildings in exchange for a higher proportion of below-market-rate units (as proposed, 2100 Mission would include three, though Hoover said this remains flexible).
“I’d like to advocate for more height,” said Buss. “If we’re going to fight climate change, we want people to live near transit.”
[…]
“I love tall buildings, personally I’d like to see 200 foot tall buildings,” Buss said.
“You just want Salesforce Towers all over,” Saitowitz teased gently.
“I think Salesforce Tower is not tall enough,” Buss responded.
Read more at missionlocal.org
[Steven] Buss and Mission YIMBY, on the other hand, call for something slightly different: more affordable housing in the Mission, and much more market-rate housing everywhere else. He sees opportunity for market-rate housing in neighborhoods like Noe Valley that, Buss asserts, have historically limited higher-density developments by zoning its land for single-family homes.
“The Mission is already doing its part — it’s doing more than its part — but what I really care about is forcing the other neighborhoods to build more,” he said, sipping a beer at El Rio last week, where he and some 15 other like-minded YIMBYs, most from the tech industry, were holding a Friendsgiving.
Read more at missionlocal.org
[Steven Buss said,] “I don’t know a single person under 35 who owns in San Francisco. I don’t know a single person under 35 without a roommate in San Francisco. We don’t get to live by ourselves. We are all just trying to make it work. I find it extremely frustrating that the Planning Commission is almost entirely made up of members who are securely housed. San Francisco is 70 percent renters, and the people making our land use decisions are almost all owners. They don’t reflect the makeup of the city.”
Read more at www.sfchronicle.com
“Literally everything in San Francisco can be challenged, everything can be stopped by any idiot with $100,” says Steven Buss, an activist with the group YIMBY Neoliberal and a candidate for San Francisco’s Democratic County Central Committee.
The fact that any permit application can be appealed by anyone at a relatively low cost creates the perfect opportunity for regulatory capture, Buss tells Reason. “There’s a mythology that having community input empowers the little guy against the big guy,” he says. Instead it “empowers people who know how to work the process.”
Read more at reason.com
While the Castro Merchants ultimately endorsed Flying Falafel over Gyro Xpress' objections, the restaurant’s attempted intervention drew the attention of a group of activists from “YIMBY Neoliberal," a subset of the political organization YIMBY Action, which advocates for zoning reform for both homes and businesses in San Francisco.
In a blog post, YIMBY Neoliberal member Dana Beuschel called the discretionary review request “a brazen attempt at rent-seeking, padding Gyro Xpress’s profits at the expense of falafel connoisseurs.”
To express support for Flying Falafel, 10 YIMBY Neoliberal members attended the October 24 Planning Commission hearing (rescheduled from October 10 due to improper display of the required notification sign).
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YIMBY Action board member Steven Buss told Hoodline that members of his group attended the meeting because Gyro Xpress' actions were “a terrible abuse of the planning process.”
Read more at hoodline.com
Chairman Wang suggested to supporters, “Next time you get harassed by a YIMBY track down their employer and send their HR, Legal, and CEO a letter outlining their YIMBY stance, and all their tweets, their digital and social comms to show their lack of civility. It goes a long way to getting them reprimanded and in some cases a dose of reality.”
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YIMBY Action board member and community organizer Steven Buss joined Mehlinger at the Planning Commission meeting on Tuesday night to share their concerns with Chair Wang’s behavior during public comment, calling for a public apology and his resignation.
“Commissioner Wang, for you to threaten a member of the public’s job for criticizing you in your official capacity is undemocratic and unacceptable,” said Mehlinger. “Commissioners, your Chair is abusing his power,” said Buss.
Read more at cupertinotoday.com
I recently visited the City of Cupertino. I didn’t go to appreciate its restaurants and parks, or to critique its low-density exclusionary zoning, or even to fantasize about affording a home there with a median price of $2 million. No, I went to defend my right to free speech against an abusive city official.
Ray Wang, the Chair of the Cupertino Planning Commission, regularly uses his position to harass his opponents. So it was no surprise when he attacked me and my pro-housing activist colleagues by trying to get us fired from our jobs for the crime of saying “Yes, we should build more housing.”
Read more at www.thebaycitybeacon.com