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TESTIMONY
Testimony by Sean Scott on ambitious housing changes and innovative ideas for community benefits and zoning
2:21:44
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86 sec
Sean Scott, a resident of FiDi, emphasizes the need for ambitious housing changes to address the city's long-standing housing emergency. He offers two unconventional ideas: first, providing communities with a percentage of tax revenues from new developments, usable via participatory budgeting, to give them direct ownership and benefit.
His second idea, which he acknowledges is not fully fleshed out, is to consider deemphasizing or removing Floor Area Ratio (FAR) caps in favor of height limits.
Sean Scott
2:21:44
Thank you.
2:21:45
Hi.
2:21:45
I'm Sean Scott, resident of Fyde.
2:21:46
I'm speaking in my personal capacity.
2:21:49
Thanks to the commissioner for all the great work, especially the thorough preliminary report.
2:21:52
I wanted to emphasize the need for ambitious housing changes to address our fifty year long housing emergency, so thank you for all the suggestions there.
2:22:00
I want to throw out two somewhat unconventional and yet and also not fully fleshed out ideas, so I'll keep this very brief.
2:22:07
I was thinking about carrots and sticks and listening to council member Sanchez's testimony, especially specifically the fair share portion.
2:22:18
And I want to offer a carrot instead of many sticks.
2:22:21
Specifically, new developments bring tax dollars to the city but are never really seen directly by their communities.
2:22:29
And so my suggestion is that we should consider giving communities a percentage of the tax revenues to be used in similar fashion to participatory budgeting where the community directly feels ownership over the net new tax revenue they bring in, so it's not just the city benefiting.
2:22:46
Second, even more unconventional, I'd love to think about how we can deemphasize the focus on or even remove FAR floor area ratio caps in favor of height limits.
2:22:57
Floor area ratio contributes to the rise of skinny supertalls that are very visible and generally don't have a ton of apartments, that can be built in a specific, lot and height envelope.
2:23:09
Thanks.