The post first appeared on CityLab.
A recent article in the Atlantic argues that San Francisco’s new urban agriculture property tax incentive will only exacerbate the problem of limited housing supply in an already overheated housing market. We share the author's concern about housing affordability, but his critique of this policy, which SPUR worked to pass, misses the mark.
The law does not discourage anyone who wants to build from building. Instead, San Francisco’s urban agriculture incentive zone program targets land that is unlikely to be developed in the near future. This includes sites that are oddly shaped, not well-suited for development or where the owner, for personal or business reasons, does not intend to put up a building anytime soon. If a property owner wants to build housing (or an office building or anything else) on their vacant lot, they’ll make far more money developing the land then they would from the property tax savings they’d get for committing it to urban agricultural use for five years.
What the law does do is give landowners who can’t or don’t want to develop a reason to consider making something more of their land than leaving it an unused, weedy eyesore. We’re talking about properties like the 15,000 square feet next to a billboard that now houses a small bee garden, mentioned in the Chronicle article that inspired Mr. Friedersdof’s piece. Or the nearly one-acre property in the Mission Terrace neighborhood that sat vacant and blighted for decades and now houses a commercial urban farm. Urban farms and gardens offer more than just aesthetic appeal. They provide numerous public benefits, including vibrant green spaces and recreation, education about fresh food and the effort it takes to produce it, ecological benefits for the city, and sites that help build community. Not every vacant private lot is suitable for housing (or zoned for it) and, where housing is not in the cards, we would rather see a garden or small farm that provides benefits to the neighborhood over an untended patch of dirt.
The housing affordability crisis in the Bay Area is an enormous problem, and SPUR has long advocated for increasing the supply of housing. Most recently, we recommended eight practical, constructive strategies to address the ever-increasing cost of rent and home ownership. And we simultaneously support urban agriculture incentive zones, because they don’t undercut efforts to make housing more affordable.