In the most played-out storyline in urban politics, San Francisco residents are alleging that a new housing development was approved without appropriate environmental review.
The development in question is a planned 200-bed temporary homeless shelter on the city's Embarcadero waterfront area.
The shelter was first proposed by Mayor London Breed back in March as part of the city's Navigation Center program, which provides temporary shelter to homeless people while they are connected to other city services.
These plans met immediate opposition from neighbors, who in, public hearings, protests, and official appeals raised objections that commonly dog proposed homeless shelters: The new shelter would bring drugs and crime to the nearby residential neighborhood.
In a lawsuit filed last week, the neighborhood group Safe Embarcadero For All has argued that the many, many negative environmental impacts the project would bring to the neighborhood amounted to "Unusual circumstances" that made this infill exemption inappropriate.
SEFA is currently asking for an injunction to stop the Embarcadero Navigation Center from going forward while the case winds through the courts.
The SEFA lawsuit is nevertheless a good example of how any response to the city's dire homelessness problem, whether its the constructions of more shelters or just the construction of more housing in general, is hamstrung by the state's onerous environmental review laws.
https://reason.com/2019/07/15/while-homeless-population-balloons-san-francisco-residents-use-environmental-lawsuit-to-stop-homeless-shelter/
The development in question is a planned 200-bed temporary homeless shelter on the city's Embarcadero waterfront area.
The shelter was first proposed by Mayor London Breed back in March as part of the city's Navigation Center program, which provides temporary shelter to homeless people while they are connected to other city services.
These plans met immediate opposition from neighbors, who in, public hearings, protests, and official appeals raised objections that commonly dog proposed homeless shelters: The new shelter would bring drugs and crime to the nearby residential neighborhood.
In a lawsuit filed last week, the neighborhood group Safe Embarcadero For All has argued that the many, many negative environmental impacts the project would bring to the neighborhood amounted to "Unusual circumstances" that made this infill exemption inappropriate.
SEFA is currently asking for an injunction to stop the Embarcadero Navigation Center from going forward while the case winds through the courts.
The SEFA lawsuit is nevertheless a good example of how any response to the city's dire homelessness problem, whether its the constructions of more shelters or just the construction of more housing in general, is hamstrung by the state's onerous environmental review laws.
https://reason.com/2019/07/15/while-homeless-population-balloons-san-francisco-residents-use-environmental-lawsuit-to-stop-homeless-shelter/
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