Tuesday San Francisco News Roundup
Machete-Wielding Man Arrested After Allegedly Attacking Another Man
A man wielding a machete was arrested after allegedly assaulting a
man in San Francisco’s Bernal Heights neighborhood early Monday morning, a
police spokeswoman said.
Shortly before 2 a.m., San Francisco resident Amilcar Alfaro, 41,
was in the 4000 block of Mission Street near Bosworth Street when he
allegedly attacked another man, San Francisco police spokeswoman Grace
Gatpandan said.
Alfaro allegedly went to a white pickup truck, grabbed a machete
from it and struck a man with it before fleeing on foot, Gatpandan said.
The victim, also a 41-year-old man, suffered lacerations to his
back and elbow. He was transported to San Francisco General Hospital with
injuries not considered life-threatening.
Gatpandan said Alfaro was arrested and booked into county jail on
suspicion of attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, felony threats
and mayhem.
The motive for the attack remains under investigation.
State High Court Upholds Right Of Cities To Require Affordable Housing In New Developments
The California Supreme Court unanimously ruled in San Francisco
Monday that cities have the right to require developers to make a portion of
new units available as affordable housing.
The court unanimously upheld a 2010 San Jose law that requires
developers of 20 or more units to provide 15 percent of those units at
below-market rates affordable to people with low and moderate incomes.
Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye wrote that the ordinance falls
within cities’ “broad discretion to regulate the use of real property to
serve the legitimate interests of the general public and the community at
large.”
Problems stemming from a scarcity of affordable housing “have
reached what might be described as epic proportions in many of the state’s
localities,” the chief justice wrote.
The court rejected a challenge by the California Building Industry
Association, which argued that the measure amounted to an unconstitutional
taking of property without just compensation.
Cantil-Sakauye wrote for the court, “This condition does not
require the developer to dedicate any portion of its property to the public
or to pay any money to the public.
“Instead, like many other land use regulations, this condition
simply places a restriction on the way the developer may use its property by
limiting the price for which the developer may offer some of its units for
sale,” the court said.
More than 170 California cities and counties have adopted similar
laws, known as inclusionary housing ordinances, according to the court.
The San Jose law was put on hold while the building association
pursued its lawsuit.
Mayor Sam Liccardo said, “The California Supreme Court has
vindicated San José’s bold decision to become the largest city in the nation
with an inclusionary housing policy, and it couldn’t have come at a time of
greater need for affordable housing.
“With the crisis we face in our housing markets, I only regret
that it required a Supreme Court ruling to uphold the ordinance, because we
could have had the benefit of several years of implementation of this
important tool,” Liccardo said in a statement.
Tony Francois, a lawyer for the building association, said the
organizations and its attorneys are reviewing the ruling to determine whether
a further appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court is possible.
“This is a very disappointing decision from the standpoint of
property rights generally, and specifically for those who want to build homes
for the public, and for people who aspire to buy a new home,” Francois said.
“The ruling allows government to impose financial penalties on
providers of new housing – a penalty that can only deter efforts to ease the
state’s housing shortage, and make it even harder and costlier for average
families to afford a home in California,” he said.
Francois is a senior staff attorney with the Sacramento-based
Pacific Legal Foundation, which supports property rights and limited
government.
The San Francisco-based Non-Profit Housing Association of Northern
California called the ruling “a big win for affordable housing.”
“Inclusionary programs are an especially important tool to ensure
that we maintain and create integrated and socio-economic and ethnically
diverse communities,” the group said in a statement.
The housing association was part of a coalition of six nonprofit
housing organizations that was allowed by the trial judge in the case, Santa
Clara Superior Court Judge Socrates Manoukian, to become an intervenor, or an
official party, on the side of San Jose.
The case came to the state high court after Manoukian overturned
the city law in 2012 and after a state appeals court in San Jose in 2013
reversed his decision and upheld the law.
The San Jose ordinance allows developers the options of paying a
fee or providing affordable housing at another location as alternatives to
making 15 percent of a new development affordable housing.
Weather Forecast For The San Francisco Bay Area
Today will be cloudy with patchy fog and drizzle in the morning
and then will become partly cloudy. Highs will be in the 50s to mid 60s. West
winds will reach 10 to 20 miles per hour.
Tonight will be partly cloudy in the evening and then will become
cloudy with patchy fog and drizzle after midnight. Lows will be in the lower
50s. West winds will reach 10 to 20 miles per hour.
Wednesday will be cloudy in the morning with patchy fog and
drizzle and then will become partly cloudy. Highs will be in the upper 50s to
mid 60s. West winds will reach 10 to 20 miles per hour.
