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HomeMy WebLinkAbout7/18/2017 Item 14, Schmidt From:Richard Schmidt <slobuild@yahoo.com> Sent:Monday, July 17, To:E-mail Council Website Subject:San Luis Ranch agenda item Attachments:San Luis Ranch ethics.doc Dear Mayor and Council, Please see attached comments. Thanks. Richard 1 July 16, 2017 RE: San Luis Ranch Dear Mayor and City Council, The “San Luis Ranch” project, named for what it will destroy not what it will create, is an ethically-laden vote – probably the most ethically-laden vote any of you have experienced. It’s appropriate for you to look at this project through that lens, and not merely through the misleading “we need housing” meme. Ethical considerations fall into three main categories: environmental ethics, humane ethics, and truthfulness ethics. These issues can only be briefly discussed in this note, but I ask you to consider them. Environment. 1. Land. “In other parts of the world, nations go to war over land like this,” said a former tenant farmer of this property. “Yet here we destroy it.” There are three elements to this concern: soil, water, climate. This land has the finest quality agricultural soil in the world – prime, class I soil. There is very little of it on the earth’s surface, and no more is being created in human time as it takes nature millions of years to create such fine stuff. In the case of this particular land, it enjoys two other attributes little of the earth’s prime soils enjoy – a ready source of underground water for irrigation (are you aware of the abundance of water in a shallow aquifer which refills yearly even in drought times, and sustained our city’s people through the previous 1980s drought?), and a year-round growing climate. This certainly is Nature’s great gift to us, to our community. Shouldn’t we cherish its productivity which, as population grows and climate changes, will be far more valuable in the future than it is today? Instead, this project will commit terracide – land murder. Development will forever destroy this soil’s productivity. That’s because the productive soil will be compacted into uselessness, then buried under many feet of inert, unfertile fill that will also be compacted into productive uselessness. (The fill, in all likelihood, will be ripped out of one of our scenic mountainsides and trucked a long distance to the site.) It’s as if our “planners” think like the Romans who destroyed Carthage and then salted its bountiful farmland to prevent its ever being productive again. Such terracide is a crime against the earth, but also against humanity as it destroys for all time the earth’s bounty in order to satisfy our own temporary desires and greed. It is intergenerational theft of the earth’s productivity. Is that what we stand for? Aren’t we better than that? 2. Other Species. This project’s arrogance towards other species is breath-taking in its assertion of “project goals” over all else. I shall address only the ethics of its handling of avian mega fauna. It is well-known among birds’ friends in the human community that that one of the Central Coast’s finest heron rookeries is on this property. The herons nest in the tall eucalyptus trees, and do so largely because of proximity to Laguna Lake and Prefumo Creek, food sources. The clearcut of those trees by this project would mow down this rookery, with no mitigation possible. There is no other comparable place nearby to which herons can relocate. Will this Central Coast heron population collapse because of this? Does the Council care? Those same eucalyptus provide a prominent buzzard roost. These scavengers provide one of nature’s services that make our lives better and healthier – cleaning up messes. Where will they go when the trees are clearcut? Does the Council care? Responsible planning takes a multi-dimensional consideration of environmental issues, considering both the means and the ethics of things like the needs of other species and preserving the biological diversity which sustains our own lives. Unfortunately, in recent years our city’s planning has deserted that multi-dimensional approach and today promotes the notion that good planning constitutes promoting an ecologically sterile human monoculture. Such planning, however, produces unsustainable outcomes, for all monocultures are unstable and ultimately unsustainable. Running them depends upon constant external inputs, which puts stresses on others’ environments as well as our own, and on throwing things away, which we all know, thanks to Barry Commoner, is impossible in nature. Can’t we do better to protect future generations’ interest in a diverse, healthy urban ecosystem instead of destroying nature and sustainability for our temporary convenience and profit? 3. Environmentalism. Most of you ran for office claiming to be “environmentalists.” I don’t believe any actual environmentalist can ethically vote for this project. Do you? Humane Ethics. I suspect all of you, if asked in public, would profess that protecting the public’s health and safety is at the top of your concerns. Does this project do that? 5. Danger from above. When I was young and rooted in Davis, there was a popular ice cream parlor in nearby Sacramento. One day it was crowded with kids and parents enjoying ice cream when an airplane crashed onto the place. You can imagine the carnage. Afterwards there was much public soul-searching: “How could they allow something to be built in such a place?” everyone asked. The danger seemed so obvious in hindsight. Like San Luis Ranch, the ice cream store was in alignment with the end of the city airport’s main runway, and you will be the they of that Sacramento lament when its refrain is heard here. There’s already been one jet crash on the site of this project’s dense housing. All aboard died, but since it was a farm field, that was the extent of the carnage. A jet crashing into a dense housing development in the middle of the night, while occupants are asleep, would be a huge human tragedy. You’ve received warning. It is not a question of if another crash will happen, but only of when. Would a good city knowingly place its residents in such danger? Can you make a single ethical argument to the contrary? 6. Danger from below. We are smug about earthquake dangers San Luis Obispo faces. (Several years back denial reached so deep the Chamber of Commerce undertook a bizarre effort to lobby to get our earthquake zone downgraded in the building code – a misinformed windmill-tilting enterprise that went nowhere since the determination was based on science, and science was not on their side.) Thus we don’t think clearly about creating earthquake hazards by what we allow to be built on dangerous soils. This site has dangerous earthquake soil. The qualities of the clay soil that makes it so fertile, underlain by an abundant shallow aquifer, creates the sort of site that liquefies in the event of a quake. When soil liquefies, buildings sink, tip, or fall as their basal support disappears. Interestingly, such liquefaction is not mitigated by routine soil compaction. Nature remembers. After the Loma Prieta earthquake, locations of old San Francisco creeks which had been long ago filled, compacted and forgotten could be mapped by veins of earthquake destruction snaking through the city. Dalidio Ranch soil is ripe for liquefaction in the event of the inevitable quake. (Most soils do not liquefy – and that is what sets this site apart from safe soils where the city should be encouraging development instead.) Our region lies within the San Andreas fault zone, and is riddled with faults. The nearest known fault capable of great damage is just a few hundred yards away, near the base of the Irish Hills. When it goes, Dalidio’s underpinnings will almost certainly liquefy. Here’s what urban liquefaction looks like: Would a good city knowingly place its residents in such inevitable danger? Can you make a single ethical argument to the contrary? 7. Given the clear dangers from sky and earth this project poses to human life, is this not the wrong project in the wrong place? Can you ethically argue otherwise? Truthfulness. The city, in cahoots with the developer, has disseminated a good deal of flapdoodle that this project provides “affordable” housing for people who work here. This flapdoodle has been tossed out for public consumption without thoughtful analysis of its truth or falsity. 8. “Affordable” housing. Aside from a handful of mandated deed-controlled homes or agency- managed apartments, the assertion of affordability is just that, an assertion. The remainder of the dwellings will sell/rent at “market” prices. A rough definition of “market” is “the most a seller can get given current prices in the city.” Developers don’t sell for less than that. Typically they push the limit so new housing comes in at the upper end of “market” for its particular niche or housing type, thereby driving the “market” still higher. Absent any requirement the developer sell for less than “market,” he will not. And you are setting no such requirements. In truth, you have no idea what this housing will cost occupants. “Whatever the market will bear” is what it will cost. The selling price may also escalate, unexpectedly and without reference to underlying production costs, from phase to phase of the project. My favorite example of this: The first Arbors tract's first homes sold in the $180K range; by the time that tract was built out, the market had inflated (late 80s) and identical homes were sold for $330K, even though there had been no corresponding increase in costs of production. When the market collapsed, guess what? The selling prices fell back to about where the first homes had been priced, and people who’d paid the higher prices suddenly couldn’t sell and recover their money. The other thing to understand about “market” prices is they aren’t set here in SLO -- the "market" has nothing to do with local conditions. It's being driven by urbanites attracted to our $200-$600 per night "experience economy" overnight accommodations who decide to move here because housing's so cheap by their elsewhere standards. But what's actually driving prices? The housing market has become internationalized, and we're now in that loop since we've done such a fine job of telling the world how wonderful we are. So our housing prices are set not by what one can earn in San Luis Obispo but by what rich people (“investors”) in Mumbai, Shanghai, Moscow, London and Rio are willing to park in this dollar-denominated commodity. Their investments in LA and SF drive up our market as well as those more distant markets. We’re sure to hear the claim from many of you that this project provides much-needed affordable housing. Given the lack of factual evidence to back that claim, and abundant evidence to contradict it, do you consider this ethical? 9. “Affordability by design.” We’re also told this project’s affordability is locked in through its design – big houses on tiny lots, etc. This is current planning ideology – but remember, ideology is theory, not fact. Because the market drives prices, "affordability by design" becomes specious. NY City went all in on this and encouraged production of "studios" (which are typically about 100 SF smaller than ours), claiming they would produce a permanent body of affordable housing. But the market spoke, and now the typical NYC studio sells for a half million dollars, and in chichi parts of town, you can add on about a million to that price. Affordable by design indeed! Further, “affordability by design” doesn’t mean smaller is cheaper. Market inversions can happen due to market circumstances. My dear parents, for example, when they decided to downsize from their large home on three acres with a natural waterfall in the backyard to a small condo had to pay more for the condo than they could get for their beautiful home – because condo demand was high. Affordability by design is planning myth, not fact. It’s also a huge gift to a developer whose land costs go way way down while the amount he can realize from selling the production housing on that skimpy piece of land are virtually unaffected. So, do you really think it’s ethical to talk about affordability by design in connection with this – or almost any – “market” project? 10. Housing for whom? There’s a pretext this housing will be occupied by people who already work in SLO who desperately want it. Much, perhaps most, of this “market” housing will be picked up by outsiders who want to live here, have a pied a terre here, or invest here so they can exploit student renters. Don’t take my word for it. When you considered the Avila Ranch there was a lovely letter from a lady contractor, part of “Team Avila” she said, with the de rigeur stuff about providing affordable housing for people who work here, and once she’d finished that, she got to the truth. She said she’d advised her friend from Arizona to wait till the project was built, and buy a place there rather than shop for what’s available now. The developers know who their market it, and it’s not us. We also all know most of our new housing is for outsiders, not for us. All the annexation areas will be largely filled by well-to-do outsiders. New downtown housing, at time of approval, has repeatedly been described as “workforce” or “affordable,” but has become neither. Rich outside buyers and even Cal Poly have gobbled it up – that is those dwelling units not turned into phony hotel rooms that rent for a king’s ransom. Given the facts, and our recent experience, do you really think it ethical to claim this is housing for us? 11. Actual affordable housing. Given our “market’s” being locked into the global economy, and given the understandable penchant of “market” developers to seek the highest market price they can, the “market” will only exacerbate our housing affordability problems. The new-housing “market” seeks the highest return. In my long-term view, that’s been the case here since 1970. When I was in the housing market eons ago, what we needed were $25K houses and what developers built were $50K houses -- not because they couldn't build the lower end stuff, but because there was too little profit per unit compared to the higher end stuff. Nothing's changed. That being the case, market housing will NEVER produce affordable housing for our workforce (paid considerably less than urban counterparts because of stingy employers). While affordable housing is too complex an issue to elucidate here, actual affordable housing options are mostly outside-the-market and include things like: 1, deed restrictions on resale prices for at least a century; 2, private housing corporations dedicated to the non-profit housing cause like exist in considerable quantity in the Bay Area; 3, employers providing housing (why not revive the "company town" in an updated form?); 4, employers providing interest free loans to cover part of the cost of a market house, repayable on sale of a house (very common in actual progressive places as near as Santa Barbara, but I've not heard of it here); 5, non-profit quasi-public housing (like housing authority); 6, public housing. (Within the market, we might look to mobile homes on owner-owned lots, a housing type that’s proven to be our most economical. Where are they in our annexation areas?) The key is to decouple enough "housing" from "market" to make a difference. That being the case, do you still feel it’s ethical to talk about San Luis Ranch as if it contributes significantly to solving our affordability problems? Please consider the ethics of the project as carefully as you consider its other aspects. Richard Schmidt