Proposition G

I received a flier in the mail last week regarding San Francisco Proposition G. Fliers for ballot propositions are always so one-sided and uninformative that I usually just toss them straight into the recycling, but this one at least appeared to have interesting subject matter. I immediately went to their website to find out more.

Proposition G (2008) proposes to clean up the Hunter's Point shipyard (using Federal funds), rebuild the Double Rock public housing projects without displacing current residents, and add 8000 new jobs, a green tech research facility, permanent work space for SF artists, thousands of new homes, and 300 acres of park land. All of this at no "new" cost to the taxpayer. The proposition also repeals 100 million in bonds approved back in 1997.

What's more, Lennar Corp plans to use green building technology for all construction at the site. Unfortunately the site does not go into further details about the green building practices aside from mentioning that it's "the latest" and it will be energy efficient and transit friendly.

I'm excited to see how this project progresses. It has potential to help people out of the trap mentioned in previous posts. If the housing is energy efficient (and hopefully makes extensive use of solar or wind power) it could help people save money, allowing them to make decisions that require a bit of investment.

I have been unable to find the actual text of the ballot measure anywhere, but I'll post an update when I find it. I would love to find out what the actual cost to taxpayers is. It looks like a bit less than 200 million is coming from Scala Real Estate Partners. But it's a 1.4 billion dollar project, so there's a bit of a gap there.