Two weeks after state senator Scott Weiner’s visit to Burlingame I am still marveling at how smoothly he can speak out of both sides of his mouth in a single meeting. Weiner was invited to the Lane Room by Thrive which is a consortium of non-profit organizations. He was invited to discuss the problems non-profits are having retaining staff as the cost of housing rises. Weiner’s Senate Bill 50, discussed here and here, appeared to be popular with some in the audience of about 60 people.
In an interview by Samaritan House CEO, Bart Charlow, Weiner comes off as a tall, skinny, somewhat geeky attorney with a heart of gold. He’s a man on a valiant mission. Yet I saw in him a streak of progressive fascism interested only in consolidating power in Sacramento by any means necessary. After describing the “carnage” that is happening in California and is “hollowing out even the middle class”, he excoriated the “No Growth” people for “adopting progressive talking points” such as “we need to build only affordable housing”. He believes that will never happen without market-rate housing to subsidize it, but others think differently. To him, it is better to demolish the concept of R1 zoning in the six most populous counties in the state via SB50 thus hurting the middle class homeowners who rely on their single-family homes as their largest investment. Weiner’s claim that “this is not about getting rid of single-family homes” rang hollow after he said “single-family homes are a ban on affordable housing”.
When asked about SB50 excluding less populous counties, particularly Marin County, Weiner spoke “bluntly” about needing to do that to get the bill through a Senate committee headed by a Marin senator. So much for principles of “fairness” that one hears so much about from progressives.
When asked about the housing quotas cities have been given (known as the RHNA formula), Weiner complained about how the formula has been gamed by some cities and two-thirds of cities don’t meet their low-income targets. It didn’t seem to occur to him that perhaps that state-imposed process should be fixed by the state Legislature. Better to scrap the whole idea of city zoning and let anyone build anything anywhere. Nice leadership.
Someone other than me asked Weiner where all the water will come from? He responded that “we have a structural deficiency” on water infrastructure and then made the ridiculous claim that “building housing doesn’t drive population growth” or water consumption. He really said that. After the obligatory comments on low-flow toilets and water reuse (“we are way behind Australia and Israel”), one was left to wonder how he would keep the middle-class in California without consuming more water. It must be nice to live in the fairyland of the state senate and not have to worry about fixing “structural deficiencies” before plunging ahead with massive growth laws.
When asked about the impact that AirBnB and VRBO have on permanent rental housing and whether something should be done to limit those businesses, Weiner magically turned into a private property rights advocate. He didn’t even seem embarrassed by the switch. He then proceeded to say that “cities have ample tools to ban or restrict” AirBnB, yet he’s quite comfortable completely overriding these same cities’ zoning ordinances. I almost had to admire such blatant hypocrisy spilling out in a single meeting.
The most revealing comment of the 90-minute session was buried in one of Weiner’s asides about Area Median Income (AMI) ranges and which income range was most “deserving” of subsidies. He noted that this was a problem until we tackle “the long-term project to realign our capitalist society and socialize housing”. There you have it.
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