Lurie vowed to add more shelters. A $7M cabin community has sat empty nearly a year

Sixty tiny cabins, purchased by San Francisco for about $7 million to combat homelessness, currently shelter no one. For nearly a year, they’ve sat vacant in a Bayview parking lot — doors shut, windows dark — next to a nearly identical cabin community that’s fully operating on the other side of a green construction fence. City officials have not explained why half of the site, known as Jerrold Commons , houses older adults while the other sits empty, undercutting Mayor Daniel Lurie’s repeated pledges to reduce homelessness and clean up the streets. Earlier this year, Lurie touted the city’s lowest number of unsheltered homeless people — those living on the streets, in tents, or in vehicles — in 15 years. But this year’s point-in-time count, which tallied 3,400 unsheltered people, used a different methodology, making it hard to compare with prior years. A block away from the Bayview cabin site, a small encampment of tents, cardboard, and discarded mattresses lines the sidewalk. For Johnte McDowell, 50, who grew up in nearby Hunters Point and fell into homelessness following a divorce four years ago, the fix is obvious. “If they opened up those extra cabins, they’d fill them right up,” McDowell said. “Having my own little box sounds very appealing.” Purchased during former Mayor London Breed’s administration for more than $100,000 apiece, the cabins were designed as a temporary bridge to more stable housing. They opened on a Mission lot in 2024 as an “innovative shelter model,” offering privacy that dorm-style shelters couldn’t. But the Mission location was always meant as a placeholder, set to clear out once a long-planned affordable housing project broke ground. As the Mission deadline approached last fall, city officials and a partner nonprofit quietly began laying the groundwork to relocate the cabins to a vacant SoMa property and pair them with on-site addiction treatment, according to emails obtained by The Standard through a public records request. But within two weeks of the plan surfacing publicly, the mayor’s office abruptly pulled the plug and instead moved the cabins to the Bayview lot, where they’ve sat unused ever since. The vacant cabins stand as an expensive, and seemingly forgotten, symbol of policy inertia in San Francisco. Driven into storage by lease disputes, site complications and neighborhood backlash in SoMa, and now caught in a political fight over the concentration of homeless services in the Bayview, the cabins demonstrate how quickly a shelter plan can unravel — even in a city where a total of nearly 8,000 people remain homeless on the streets and in shelters. Lurie’s office and the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing did not provide an explanation for why the cabins remain in storage or whether the city is actively pursuing alternative locations to bring them online. The mayor’s office declined to make Kunal Modi, Lurie’s senior homelessness adviser, available for an interview. A statement from Emily Cohen, a spokesperson for the homelessness department, focused on the decision to scrap the SoMa project, citing failed lease negotiations and noting that “not every property the city evaluates ultimately works.” Asked about the idle cabins after a press conference Tuesday, Lurie did not comment directly on the cabins but said his administration was “being thoughtful” about the kinds of shelter beds it opens. It’s a similar response to the one his office gave when it walked back a signature campaign promise to add 1,500 shelter beds within Lurie’s first six months in office. “Just standing up a shelter bed … does not work for everybody,” he said. “We need to get people off the street and into the right kind of bed.” Steve Good, CEO of Five Keys, the nonprofit tapped to run the shelter in SoMa before the plan was scrapped, said city officials have not reached out to him in the last year to discuss alternative sites for the cabins. “It’s unfortunate that we have 60 beds that can’t be utilized,” Good said. “It seems like a lost opportunity.” How the SoMa deal collapsed Quiet maneuvering began about three months before the Mission site’s November 2025 closing deadline. Staff at the Housing Accelerator Fund — a nonprofit helping to manage Lurie’s $49 million donor-backed Breaking the Cycle initiative — found what looked like an ideal replacement. The SoMa property is a vacant, triangular lot at 428 11th St., wedged between U.S. 101 and Costco, with few nearby homes or retailers and a “very reasonable” $270,000 annual rent. The Housing Accelerator Fund hired architects and signed a letter of intent for a three-year lease while the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing helped secure an expedited permit review. Officials also developed a plan to use the new location to expand RESTORE, a Department of Public Health program that pairs shelter with medication-assisted treatment. As momentum built, internal warnings about the tight timeline began to surface. On Aug. 15, 2025, Kate Hartley of the Housing Accelerator Fund emailed Modi that storing the cabins before deploying them to 11th Street was “not a viable option” given the cost and wear of two moves. Moving them directly to 11th Street was the “clear path forward,” she wrote. There were also concerns about the lease and site infrastructure. The property owners rejected a short-term exit clause, demanding a full three-year lease commitment instead, and officials worked to structure a guarantee without directly binding the city to it. Meanwhile, the site potentially needed a PG&E service upgrade, so officials were considering opening it at partial capacity and running it on temporary power at the outset. Neighborhood politics posed another challenge. City officials repeatedly delayed their public outreach strategy about the 11th Street project through August and September, according to the emails. The planned public outreach was undercut in mid-September, when SF Yimby , then the Chronicle, published articles about the plan. SoMa residents and merchants objected to the location because the area had already taken on more than its fair share of homeless housing and supportive services. Members of the SOMA West Community Benefit District met with Modi on Sept. 24 to voice their concerns that a new site would worsen existing problems — drug use, violence and break-ins — that they argued the city had failed to address at a nearby supportive housing complex. “You need to solve the current problem. Don’t create more issues for us,” SoMa resident Douglas Geerdes recalled saying during the meeting. “If you can’t even manage what’s existing, why are you taking on other projects in the neighborhood?” Four days later, Modi told Cohen, the spokesperson for the homelessness department, to pause community outreach on the project. Two days after that, the plan was dead. A pivot to the Bayview On the morning of Sept. 30, Foster emailed Modi that a decision was needed by the end of day, as the 11th Street lease letter of intent was set to expire the next day. She offered two options: The city could sign a letter guaranteeing the landlord its financial capacity for the three-year lease and proceed — permits were already in hand, with the site ready for a November cabin move — or abandon it for the Bayview. The Bayview option, which was raised in a meeting the day prior, meant walking away from roughly $300,000 already spent on architecture and design — a loss that would need to be disclosed to donors, Foster wrote. Later that day, Modi notified Foster in an email that the city was scrapping the 11th Street plan and moving the cabins to the Bayview strictly “as ‘storage’ at the moment.” Modi told Foster he’d call her to discuss how to “appropriately communicate with our funders” and that he was “confident much of the work will be useful in a new location at Jerrold,” according to an email. (The Standard obtained this email, among others, in response to a public records request with the homelessness department. The mayor’s office later said it had no record of the email when The Standard requested Modi’s correspondence with Housing Accelerator staff.) Nearly a year later, the storage designation stands, with no timeline, budget, or plan to reactivate the cabins. The day after the SoMa project was scrapped, Cohen circulated internal messaging on “why we are not moving forward with the proposed recovery cabins.” The statement said the city and property owners “were unable to reach mutually agreeable terms,” but officials would continue looking for alternative sites. Foster said in an interview this week that the Accelerator Fund hasn’t been involved in identifying any new sites since the SoMa lease fell through. In all, $219,000 was sunk into the project, according to a city record of Breaking the Cycle fund allocations. The sudden decision to move the cabins to the Bayview ignited a fresh political battle. Supervisor Shamann Walton, who represents the Bayview, blasted the mayor, calling him an “oligarch” and accusing him of pulling a “bait and switch” by attempting to expand the Jerrold Commons shelter site without proper community engagement. While the Lurie administration framed the Bayview move as a temporary logistical stopgap, Walton argued that the district was already saturated with homeless services and was another example of city officials pushing more of them into lower-income neighborhoods. The complaint landed amid a broader debate inside city government over the uneven distribution of shelters and behavioral health facilities. San Francisco’s shelter system remains heavily concentrated in the Tenderloin, SoMa, Mission, and Bayview-Hunters Point, while many west-side neighborhoods don’t have any shelter beds. Shelter data for Walton’s district paints a more complicated picture. Bayview-Hunters Point accounts for 21% of the city’s unsheltered population but holds just 11% of its shelter beds, while SoMa holds 28% of the city’s beds but has just 11% of its unsheltered population, according to a January report from the homelessness department. Walton did not return calls or emails for this story. An aide for the supervisor declined to comment. To address these disparities and reform San Francisco’s homeless service system, the city adopted legislation last year aimed at capping new shelters in heavily saturated districts and, on Monday, launched a multiyear effort to overhaul how it awards homeless service contracts. Yet for community members eager to see improved street conditions, administrative policy reforms ring hollow when 60 usable cabins remain stuck behind a fence. “The current administration needs to fix this problem,” Geerdes said. “Sixty people aren’t housed because the city is not doing anything to solve it.”

City moves ahead with OpenGov software extension worth up to $38.9M

A Board of Supervisors committee on Wednesday unanimously approved extending a contract worth up to $38.9 million for OpenGov, a controversial software that Mayor Daniel Lurie has championed as part of his efforts to overhaul the city’s clunky permitting system. The 3-0 vote by the Budget and Finance Committee cleared one of the final hurdles for the city to lock in OpenGov as its permitting software for the next five years. The vote was approved by the committee without a recommendation, which occurs when there is disagreement among the voting members, and dissent came mostly from Supervisor Chyanne Chen. The contract extension is being handled by Supervisor Stephen Sherrill, and the full Board of Supervisors is expected to make a final decision in the coming weeks. Sherrill said a last-minute change to the contract allows the city more flexibility if it wants to pull out of the software deal. Before the vote, supervisors asked hard questions about why the mayor’s office chose OpenGov. The Standard reported last year that OpenGov’s founders had connections to Lurie’s nonprofit and that city staffers had preferred a cheaper software. Following the report, Supervisor Jackie Fielder promised to hold a hearing on OpenGov’s procurement . She also asked the budget and legislative analyst to investigate how OpenGov was chosen. Sherrill defended the selection process. “The procurement was different. The contract is different. The speed of procurement and implementation is different, and by different, I mean faster. Different is hard, but sometimes different is necessary. Change is necessary. Have we had a permitting system that is good and facilitates the construction of housing? No.” Fielder said her goal was to determine whether the city was getting the best bang for its buck with OpenGov, which signed a $5.9 million no-bid contract with the city last year. Former OpenGov staffers told The Standard the deal was the largest and most complex the company had ever undertaken, and the software lacked key features at the time. The 2025 contract ends Sept. 30. “I want to make one thing clear: I am not questioning whether San Francisco should have an integrated and best-in-class permitting system,” said Fielder. “Improving the public’s experience with city permitting is absolutely valuable. I am, however, questioning whether we got the best deal for this contract.” A spokesperson for the mayor did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday’s vote. Former OpenGov employees and current city workers told The Standard in May that the shift to the software has had significant delays and that the company was unprepared to take on such a large project. Lurie’s initiative — dubbed “PermitSF” — currently allows a small set of permits to be acquired through the OpenGov system. On Wednesday, one of OpenGov’s project leads said there have been problems with the time it takes to issue some permits under the new system. Supervisor Matt Dorsey, who chairs the Budget and Finance Committee, chalked up issues with implementation to “growing pains.” “The original implementation was months behind schedule, and as has been acknowledged, for some permit types, in fact, processing times are actually longer today than they were even under legacy systems,” he said. “I think we can accept that.” Dorsey said the flexibility of allowing the city to exit the contract was critical in his support for proceeding with the extension. Both Dorsey and Sherrill — allies of the mayor — were involved in pushing for the last-minute changes with Lurie’s office, Sherrill said. Lurie’s vision is to create a centralized permitting system. Today, those seeking permits that aren’t under OpenGov’s new system have to deal with multiple city departments using outdated software. Critics say the permitting infrastructure encourages corruption and delays construction projects. While there is no official count of the permit types available in the city, the estimate is 570. Lurie has denied that favoritism was involved in the selection of OpenGov. In February 2025, he set an aggressive benchmark for the city to stand up a new permitting infrastructure within one year, a timeline the mayor’s office said was part of its decision to rapidly select a vendor. “Had we done a [competitive bid], it would have likely added upward of six months to a year of additional process, delaying modernization and progress that our small businesses, homeowners, and home builders deserve,” said Liz Watty, a Planning Department official and a lead on the OpenGov project. Watty said OpenGov was “solidly under the average” price point, according to a Gartner Consulting Group report commissioned by the city in 2023. Watty acknowledged that the procurement of OpenGov could have been handled differently. She said the city should have had a standardized rubric for grading vendors. She also said that when the mayor’s office was seeking vendors last year, it used language suggesting that the city was not ready to make an immediate decision but quickly signed a contract with OpenGov within a matter of months. Watty said the mayor’s office will not use this type of language when procuring vendors going forward. Fielder said Ned Segal, a mayoral office policy chief who helped oversee the OpenGov project, was invited to testify at her hearing but did not appear. Watty said she helped make the final decision on OpenGov with Segal. Fielder asked whether Segal had contacted executives at other vendors before the city formally notified companies of its permitting needs, as he had with OpenGov’s CEO. Watty said she did not know because she joined the PermitSF project in June 2025, after those conversations took place. During Wednesday’s hearing, the budget and legislative analyst presented the findings of its inquiry. The office found that the original OpenGov contract was eight times the price of other no-bid software contracts and said Lurie should have issued a competitive bid for the software. “The best practices state that IT procurement must balance transparency and fairness in the procurement process with flexibility, and it’s the transparency and fairness aspects that we found lacking in this process,” said Fred Brousseau, director of policy analysis at the budget and legislative analyst’s office.

Rare alliance backs SF supervisor after board president boots him from committees

It isn’t every day that one of the city’s influential moderate political groups and its largest public-sector unions stand arm-in-arm. The odd bedfellows — GrowSF and SEIU Local 1021 — have come together with a handful of other organizations to protest Supervisor Bilal Mahmood’s removal this month from two board committees. Mahmood on Aug. 17 accused Board President Rafael Mandelman of stripping him of his membership in the Land Use and Transportation and Government Audit and Oversight committees over disagreements about a historic preservation bill authored by Mandelman. “We find the removal of Supervisor Mahmood for simply engaging in the normal legislative process to be unjustified,” states the letter, which was obtained by The Standard. “San Franciscans expect their legislators to debate, amend, and compromise in public, without fear of retaliation. Absent any demonstrated malfeasance on the part of a supervisor, the decision to remove one involuntarily based on policy disagreement is both undemocratic and is not in the best interest of the city.” The letter, also signed by SEIU Local 2015, UA Local 38 Plumbers and Pipefitters, Sheetmetal Workers Local 104, SF YIMBY, and the Council on American Islamic Relations (Mahmood is the sole Muslim member of the Board of Supervisors), requests that Mahmood be reinstated to the two committees. “[R]egardless of one’s perspective on underlying legislation, committee assignments should not be lost due to disagreements on policy — that is fundamental to the democratic process,” it states. “City Hall works best when these disagreements are handled through open debate at the dais, not through unnecessary and unwarranted committee demotions.” In an interview, Mandelman said he’s unlikely to change the current assignments. “Committee assignments are a complicated thing,” he said. “Each move impacts other supervisors. I think I’m pretty OK with the assignments we have now.” Mahmood — who helped draft the letter with the signatories — said the organizations backing him “don’t normally agree.” “But I think for them to come out in this moment to make a statement is a unique consensus position not about one individual,” he added. “It is about standing up for good governance.” The disagreement stems from Mahmood critiquing as anti-housing Mandelman’s effort to streamline historic landmark designations, a bill supported by Mayor Daniel Lurie. Mahmood has tried amending the bill, changes Mandelman claims would add bureaucracy to landmarking. Steven Buss Bacio of GrowSF said that even though he considers Mandelman a “good ally,” he was “really disappointed” to see the board president remove Mahmood from the committees. “Bilal has been an incredible ally and force for more housing in the city,” Buss Bacio said. “I was really disappointed to see him get unceremoniously removed from the land use committee. I think he was doing a really good job. I don’t like the way it went down.” Brandon Powell, the Bay Area organizing director for YIMBY Action, described Mandelman’s move as “just inappropriate.” Asked if he’d gotten any clarification from Mandelman over the intent of his legislation, Powell said, “I’ve only seen his dismissive quotes in the press. We think his responses don’t address our concerns in any serious way, and frankly, are beneath him.” A representative with SEIU Local 1021 did not respond to a request for comment. The Mandelman-Mahmood brawl may portend a political race. Mandelman has opened a committee to run for Assemblymember Matt Haney’s seat. (Haney may seek state Sen. Scott Wiener’s seat if Wiener wins his campaign to succeed Rep. Nancy Pelosi.) The Standard has reported that Mahmood has expressed interest in running for Haney’s seat, too, though he waved off the possibility when asked about it.

San Francisco wins fight over billions in Trump-threatened aid

Billions of dollars in federal housing and transportation aid earmarked for San Francisco and other cities suddenly came with new strings last year after President Donald Trump directed agencies across the government to strip programs touching diversity, gender identity, abortion, and immigration. Even though grantees had already been awarded the funds after applying for them in 2024, the dispersal of such aid was held up as local governments challenged the president’s orders in court . One year later, the cities have won. A panel of judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Tuesday voted to uphold an order blocking the federal government’s conditions on housing and transportation grants. The ruling protects roughly $240 million in annual funding to the Department of Housing and Urban Development in San Francisco, including about $50 million for homelessness services, according to the city attorney’s office, which was one of eight plaintiffs that sued the federal government. Alongside those housing funds, the ruling protects some $2 billion the city receives from agencies under the Department of Transportation. “These grant conditions are not only illegal, but they also have nothing to do with the purpose or performance of these grants,” City Attorney David Chiu said in statement. The plaintiffs sued HUD and the Department of Transportation last year after the agencies rewrote grant agreements to require recipients to certify that they operate no programs that violate federal anti-discrimination law; promise not to spend funds promoting “gender ideology” or elective abortion; and verify the immigration status of individual recipients. U.S. District Judge Barbara Rothstein in Seattle blocked the conditions last June. The administration appealed. Writing for a three-judge panel on the appeals court, Judge M. Margaret McKeown found that most conditions “far exceed the limited authority set out by Congress and superimpose onerous requirements well after the government already awarded grant funds.” Last year , the city was set to receive $56 million for 35 homelessness assistance projects under HUD’s Continuum of Care program, an annual grant since 1994. Such funds are meant to help organizations that assist vulnerable populations achieve long-term housing stability, such as the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corp., which used $1.1 million in previous awards for the construction of a 70-unit affordable housing project at 180 Jones St. The panel did give the government one win, ruling that Title VI (of the Civil Rights Act of 1964) permits agencies to require nondiscrimination assurances covering federally funded programs. The panel sent the case back to Rothstein to narrow her initial injunction accordingly. Appeals Judge Patrick Bumatay dissented, arguing that Congress gave HUD broad discretion over how its money is spent and that the court had “step[ped] into the political arena” and was “decid[ing] what we think is best for the country.” San Francisco and its plaintiff partners also sued the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services over similar grant conditions and secured a preliminary injunction last summer. The federal administration has separately appealed this injunction to the Ninth Circuit. According to the city attorney’s office, San Francisco relies on approximately $325 million in non-Medicaid and non-Medicare HHS grant funding, which supports early childhood development, disease prevention, and mental health services.

California Forever’s new city plan hits local resistance — but lawmakers could forge ahead

A plan to build a new, billionaire-backed city in rural Solano County has run into a fresh wave of local resistance. This time it’s over a last-minute deal led by Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office to facilitate development of a major shipbuilding hub. Solano County leaders voted 3-2 on Tuesday night to oppose proposed state legislation that would make it easier for California Forever — the Silicon Valley-funded initiative seeking to build a city of up to 400,000 residents on open farmland — to develop a 1,350-acre site along the Sacramento- San Joaquin River Delta for shipbuilding by forgoing a new environmental review. The vote is the latest sign of how far California Forever’s pitch has shifted: what began as a proposal for a walkable new city has increasingly centered on shipbuilding and industrial development, with housing pushed to a later phase. The local pushback highlights the uncertainty surrounding the developer’s broader plans. Weeks after losing a top defense startup to Texas, the waterfront site has no active shipbuilders lined up, yet the proposed state legislation declares that “development of maritime uses in this area is urgent and a matter of statewide importance.” The proposed legislation, introduced in the final days of this year’s legislative session, was hashed out in closed-door meetings between the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development, California Forever, and state and local lawmakers. It drew sharp criticism from environmental groups, residents and Solano County leaders, who argued Tuesday that they had not been given sufficient time to engage with stakeholders or weigh in on the proposal. Supervisor Mitch Mashburn, who voted to oppose the legislation as written, said the county shouldn’t be forced into a decision simply because time was short. Instead, he moved to keep working with all interested parties on a stronger proposal for next year’s legislative session. “I think that we need to continue to work on this legislation,” he said. “The piece, for me, that gave it urgency was worrying about whether the governor was going to cram it down our throats. And I got to tell you right now, I ain’t really that afraid of the governor.” Despite the county’s vote, state officials could still move forward with the legislation but they would need to act quickly before the legislative session ends on Aug. 31. By California Forever’s own account, the narrow scope of the proposed bill could be its undoing. Earlier this month, the company publicly opposed an earlier draft that would fast-track permitting for the shipyard and industrial park without including the Suisun City expansion — a plan to annex thousands of acres in the city for housing and manufacturing. California Forever said that such a fracturing would “guarantee that these employment centers are approved on paper but never get built.” The bill that emerged does just that. Endorsed by Assemblymember Lori Wilson, D-Suisun City, and Sen. Christopher Cabaldon, D-West Sacramento, it would designate a 1,350-acre waterfront site in eastern Solano County as a maritime industrial zone for shipbuilding and allows developers to rely on an 18-year-old environmental report instead of requiring a new environmental review. Both Cabaldon and Wilson stressed Tuesday that the proposed bill did not include the annexation plan, that no shipyard proposal has been submitted and it did not force county officials to approve any future projects. Wilson characterized it as “a decision to prepare, rather than a decision to develop.” Solano Together, a coalition of local residents and organizations opposed to California Forever’s vision, has called the effort a “billionaire power grab.” Rio Vista Councilmember Sarah Connelly said she was “appalled” California Forever was trying to bypass the state’s environmental laws, calling the initiative a “Trojan horse.” Lucía Muñoz, a policy associate at the environmental nonprofit Save The Bay, said that allowing the bay to be dredged for a shipyard without first requiring a new environmental impact report would “set a terrible precedent.” California Forever’s vision was originally sold as an idyllic, walkable city of 400,000 with European-style architecture built on rural pastureland. The plan became public in 2023, after the company spent years secretively buying up property under an umbrella entity. It’s backed by high-profile tech investors including LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, Stripe co-founders Patrick and John Collison, and Michael Moritz, chairman of The Standard. The legislative push follows years of local opposition and a series of high-profile pivots. After withdrawing its proposed 2024 ballot measure that would have allowed residents to vote directly on the master plan, the company shifted to courting officials directly. The company anchored its revamped proposal in the shipyard and a 2,100-acre manufacturing hub, referred to as the Solano Foundry. They also reached an agreement with neighboring Suisun City to build out their city and thousands of housing units on annexed land. That strategy suffered a major blow last month when defense startup Saronic Technologies pulled out of negotiations to build a $3.2 billion shipyard on the site, opting for Texas instead. After the loss, California Forever said that every month without legislation to fast-track the development proposal was “a month in which Solano County and California lose more companies to other states.” This isn’t the company’s first high-stakes pressure campaign. According to CalMatters , California Forever mounted a similar drive last year when they pressed Solano County officials for a last-minute vote on shipyard legislation that ultimately fizzled out. This year, the company appeared to follow a similar playbook. To help advance its legislative push, California Forever brought on former Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg and former Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg as “special counsel.” The company also reached agreements with two major Bay Area building trades unions earlier this year, committing to use union labor for the majority of the project’s construction. In exchange, the labor groups launched a petition pressing elected officials to permit groundbreaking on the shipyard and manufacturing hub. A January 2026 report by the Bay Area Council Economic Institute projected the Suisun Expansion and Solano Shipyard would create more than 530,000 jobs and $16 billion in annual tax revenue. Despite the many political and commercial obstacles that remain, California Forever is still projecting confidence. In a June podcast interview , CEO Jan Sramek said the company expected to open a wait list for prospective homebuyers “later this year or early next year” — even as the shipyard and manufacturing hub — central to the company’s current pitch — still lack legislative approval to move forward.

Housing advocates sue SF, saying it illegally carved SoMa out of state density law

A coalition of YIMBY groups has filed a lawsuit against the city of San Francisco to overturn a local ordinance that exempts SoMa and other eastern neighborhoods from a state transit density law. The law, SB 79, authored by state Sen. Scott Wiener, took effect in July. It allows taller, denser housing near public transit stops, creating the dense, walkable, transit-rich neighborhoods of urbanist fantasy. But in May, Mayor Daniel Lurie signed a bill that would exempt parts of SoMa, the Bayview, and the Bayshore from SB 79. The rationale was two-fold. First, the mayor’s Family Zoning Plan already allows for taller buildings across the city. Second, SB 79 gives local governments the option to create and adopt “alternative plans,” provided they deliver the same net housing capacity as the state law would if adopted unaltered. But YIMBY Law and other groups are claiming that the ordinance actually subverts the state by repackaging housing capacity from the Family Zoning Plan and the state density bonus law as new capacity created by SB 79. “It’s effectively triple-dipping,” said Ryan Patterson, an attorney for YIMBY Law, which filed the suit Thursday in San Francisco Superior Court. The state Department of Housing and Community Development gave SF’s alternative plan conditional approval . (The lawsuit also names HCD as a defendant.) “San Francisco can’t have it both ways,” said Sonja Trauss, executive director of YIMBY Law. “This is a naked attempt to prevent new housing from getting built in San Francisco at a time where one-bedroom apartments are renting for $4,000. It’s illegal, and this type of obstructionism is what keeps San Francisco’s housing costs so astonishingly high.” Alex Barrett-Shorter, a spokesperson for the city attorney, said the office will review the complaint and respond in court. She declined to comment further. The lawsuit comes as the city faces an explosion in rental prices and a lack of housing choices for newcomers. The average rent for a one-bedroom apartment is $4,300, according to Zillow, a figure experts have blamed in part on an influx of highly paid workers in the artificial intelligence sector. This is the second time YIMBY Law has sued the city this year. It filed a complaint in February claiming that the Family Zoning Plan is insufficient to meet the state’s housing production mandate for San Francisco. California has tasked San Francisco with planning for 82,000 new housing units by 2031. The Board of Supervisors approved Lurie’s Family Zoning Plan in December. It required rezoning for 36,000 units over the next six years. San Francisco has also faced legal threats from those on the opposite side of the housing debate. The NIMBY groups Neighborhoods United SF and Small Business Forward sued in January, claiming the Family Zoning Plan violates the California Environmental Quality Act. Neither the mayor’s office nor Supervisor Matt Dorsey, who represents SoMa, responded to requests for comment.

Could a San Francisco progressive like Abdul El-Sayed knock out moderate Dems?

Abdul El-Sayed just delivered for progressives in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary. El-Sayed, a former public health official, ran his campaign on an unabashed pro-Palestinian platform, even going as far as to say Israel shouldn’t exist as a purely Jewish state . The eyes of progressives across the country are on El-Sayed as he’s set to face off with Republican Mike Rogers in Michigan’s general election, as his win may prove that left-wing politicians — and not moderate centrists — may be the right candidates to lead against Republicans, at least in some districts. El-Sayed’s victory is not the only sign that the Democratic Party’s left flank may be regaining some momentum. In New York, progressive Mayor Zohran Mamdani has emerged as a national power broker after helping elect a slate of left-wing congressional candidates. In Washington, D.C., democratic socialist Janeese Lewis George won the Democratic primary for mayor, effectively securing the job in the heavily Democratic city. And in Seattle, democratic socialist Katie Wilson took office as mayor earlier this year. Here in San Francisco, progressives aplenty dot November’s ballot, so at Power Play we thought we’d break down the likelihood that a similarly far-left candidate could catch fire here, particularly in light of our own nationally important race — the bid to replace Rep. Nancy Pelosi in Congress. Well, just how popular was El-Sayed? That’s the first thing to know — while his own polling showed him comfortably leading Rep. Haley Stevens, a moderate Democrat, he ended up finishing under a percentage point ahead of her when the race was called by the AP . It was a true squeaker. The New York Times detailed the bulk of his coalition: younger voters, college students, educated people, and wealthy white voters. How does that match up with San Francisco? “We certainly have the latter of those,” campaign consultant Daniel Anderson told Power Play. Though San Francisco’s wealthy white voters have leaned more centrist lately, as seen in the election of Mayor Daniel Lurie, as for younger folks, well, San Francisco has one of the smallest shares of under-30-year-olds of any major city , according to a recent data dive by the San Francisco Chronicle. “It’s becoming essentially a very wealthy suburb,” Anderson said, “the voting behavior is looking more and more like that.” Didn’t we see a bunch of rabble-rousing young progressives screaming like BTS fans at former congressional candidate Saikat Chakrabarti’s Hasan Piker rally ? Absolutely, but it didn’t do him much good, in the end. In the District 11 congressional primary to succeed Pelosi , Chakrabarti lost to fellow progressive Connie Chan, with 18% to Chan’s 30%. More to the point, state Sen. Scott Wiener , considered a centrist, got nearly 41% of the vote. Chan is a progressive, but in the San Francisco mold: against corporate money in elections, yes, and not a fan of billionaires, but more interested in local issues like stopping tenant displacement than trumpeting international concerns. San Francisco’s sophisticated local politics guarantee a good chunk of voters are the same. Seattle just elected a democratic socialist mayor. What’s the lesson there? Wilson had never held elected office before unseating incumbent Bruce Harrell . A longtime community organizer, she made affordability the centerpiece of her campaign, calling for higher taxes on the wealthy to fund affordable housing and other public services. Like El-Sayed, her victory has fueled the argument that unapologetically progressive candidates can still win in expensive, Democratic cities. Speaking of the congressional race in SF, Wiener got a ton of backlash when he didn’t call the war in Gaza a “genocide.” Is that a major parallel with El-Sayed’s race, considering Palestine was one of his central planks? On the surface, it may seem like it, since both of San Francisco’s congressional candidates are now on record calling Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide. But the prominence of the issue is what’s at play. “I would never expect it to be a defining issue in San Francisco,” Eric Kingsbury , a member of the San Francisco Democratic Party board, told Power Play, particularly for demographic reasons. San Francisco simply doesn’t have the same demographic makeup as Michigan, he argued — even our college-educated population is wealthier than other cities, he noted, a decidedly different slice to the demographic. The pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC spent big against El-Sayed because of Palestine’s prominence in his race. Is that likely here, too? AIPAC reportedly spent at least $30 million to help El-Sayed’s rival, Stevens. While there have been mistaken call-outs of AIPAC money in the District 11 race, local AIPAC spending hasn’t reached those heights. “It’s like such a negative association among certainly progressives and liberals,” Anderson noted, that the money would almost certainly backfire here. Another Michigan difference: El-Sayed netted overwhelming support in Arab American and Muslim-majority precincts in Detroit and other parts of Michigan. Those groups don’t enjoy similar numbers here. Progressives are cooked, then, is what you’re saying? Not at all. Nadia Rahman, Chakrabarti’s political director and a San Francisco political consultant in her own right, noted that the city’s pendulum of power tends to swing back and forth between moderates and progressives. And as Wilson argued to voters in Seattle, “we’re at like the peak of a new affordability crisis here,” Rahman said, a national problem amplified locally by the AI industry boom driving up rent . Even Lurie , whose favorability numbers have been in the stratosphere, frequently topping 70%, has seen backlash in the comments of his social media videos from San Franciscans demanding more action on affordability. “Are people going to be out with their pitchforks, or is it like just a simmering boil right now?” Rahman said. That’ll make the difference for progressives. When the affordability crisis peaks, then, it’ll be like a Bat Signal to progressive Democrats who will swoop in with a solution? Not so fast. Rahman has her doubts. “Can a candidate like Abdul El-Sayed win here? That is likely a reflection of how strong and how organized” local progressives are, she said. “Right now, there’s like an absence of leadership in the progressive faction politically.” And there’s still time for Lurie and his moderate Democrat allies on the Board of Supervisors to tackle the affordability crisis. They’re certainly trying — Supervisor Danny Sauter has focused on paid leave for parents , and Lurie committed $34 million from this year’s budget to help low-income people keep their health insurance. “The congressional race will demonstrate where the city’s at and how coordinated the progressive camp can be,” Rahman said. “They have to get back to like their top tier of organizing again to pull something off like that.” Got tips? Send them to us at powerplay@sfstandard.com .

Lurie welcomes federal regulation of Waymo and robotaxi industry

Mayor Daniel Lurie is calling for stricter federal regulations governing self-driving cars after a string of high-profile robotaxi breakdowns exposed what he says are gaps in California’s oversight of the fast-growing industry. Lurie plans to back legislation by Rep. Kevin Mullin, a Democrat who represents parts of the city and San Mateo County, to improve how Waymos and other robotaxis interact with first responders. Waymo meltdowns during the July 4 fireworks display and December blackout have been a black eye for the company and a source of frustration for San Franciscans. Lurie penned a letter to state officials this month urging them to pass stricter robotaxi regulations. The federal proposal would require autonomous vehicle companies to demonstrate core operational capabilities before expanding service, including the ability to clear disabled vehicles from traffic lanes and adjust routes in real time during emergencies. If passed, the Autonomous Vehicle Emergency Response Coordination Act would require creating a 24-hour hotline for officials to communicate with the AV companies while responding to incidents. The law would mandate that robotaxi companies create and share an emergency response plan and a process for geofencing, or preventing the cars from entering the area of an active emergency or hazard. “San Francisco is the global center of innovation, and we’ve been on the cutting edge of autonomous vehicles and street safety. Because we were one of the first cities to welcome autonomous vehicles at scale, we have learned more than almost any other city about how they operate in a dense, complex urban environment,” Lurie said in a statement. “This legislation will help keep San Franciscans safe while taking the lessons we’ve learned to the rest of the country.” “Being an innovation leader here in San Francisco and around this country also carries a responsibility,” Lurie said Tuesday. “San Francisco wants AVs on our streets, and we want them to be here safely.” San Francisco Fire Chief Dean Crispen and Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety President Cathy Chase are also backing the bill. Waymo said federal regulations could benefit its industry. “Waymo has long supported a federal AV framework to establish standards for autonomous vehicles, and we similarly support efforts to standardize how AV developers engage with first responders,” said Waymo Head of Federal Policy and Government Affairs Tiffany Moore in a statement. “Establishing minimum guidelines would provide the entire industry and public safety community with a consistent framework, ensuring emergency responders have the resources and certainty they need whenever they encounter an autonomous vehicle on the road.” Mullin said the law would build accountability in an industry that is spreading across the country. “We’re putting the onus on AV companies themselves to meet minimum standards on safety,” Mullin said at a Tuesday press conference. During the city’s Fourth of July fireworks celebration, which drew more than 100,000 spectators to the waterfront, dozens of Waymo vehicles became stranded in gridlock , with some running out of power and blocking key streets. A similar breakdown occurred during a citywide power outage in December. Transportation advocates in San Francisco said the July 4 disruption underscored long-standing concerns about accountability as autonomous vehicles multiply on city streets. San Francisco Fire Department records obtained by The Standard reveal repeated occurrences of Waymos blocking firetrucks and paramedics and delaying response time to emergencies. In July, Jonathan Morrison, administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, wrote a letter to robotaxi companies saying the agency had “identified a clear pattern of driverless AVs interfering with law enforcement and other first responders.” California has implemented some rules that are similar to aspects of Mullin’s proposal. This year, the California DMV passed new regulations that require autonomous vehicle companies to create annual “first responder interaction plans,” allow emergency responders to manually override the cars, and require robotaxi companies to obey geofencing directives. These regulations also require robotaxi companies to answer queries from emergency responders within 30 seconds. Any company seeking to operate robotaxis in California must clear permitting processes overseen by both the state Department of Motor Vehicles and the Public Utilities Commission — a stricter framework than in Texas, Arizona, and other states. Six companies hold permits to test driverless vehicles without a human safety operator in California.

Lurie wanted San Francisco to bounce back. Now he’s got an affordability crisis

For years, the overwhelming perception of San Francisco was that of a crime-ridden liberal hellhole from which residents were desperate to escape. Now it feels like the hottest city in the country. The reversal comes as AI money pours in, with companies filling long-empty downtown offices , and their high-income workers driving a red-hot housing and rental market . Mayor Daniel Lurie, who rose to power in 2024 on a campaign promise to focus on public safety, has prioritized reselling San Francisco as a city on the rise — one Instagram reel at a time . It’s a remarkable turnaround for a city that spent years trying to convince residents, employers, and investors that its best days weren’t behind it. Now, as that recovery takes hold, it is reshaping Lurie’s governing agenda. The boom that is reversing the doom-loop trend has also revived San Francisco’s oldest challenge: affordability. Lurie, who spent his first 18 months in office cleaning up San Francisco’s streets , is discovering that he has a more pernicious problem to solve. “I am the first one to say we are not where we want to be,” the mayor said this week in an interview with The Standard at his City Hall office about his proposals to mitigate the high cost of living. “We have to make this city more affordable, so that families can stay here and thrive here.” That San Francisco is expensive is not breaking news. But if living costs were pricey before, there’s no adequate adjective to describe current conditions. The typical home value was about $1.4 million in June , according to Zillow, which city economists reference for their data analyses, a 9.5% increase from the year before. The median monthly rent has surged 19% over the last year to $3,558 , according to Apartment List’s July report. Those numbers illustrate the paradox facing City Hall. The economic recovery that has made San Francisco one of the country’s most attractive real estate markets is also making it harder for many people to afford living here. “It has been the fastest increase that I’ve ever seen in one single season,” Compass agent Ruth Krishnan said. Before you ask: “Yes, AI is definitely part of what is increasing the price, and it’s probably going to increase it more,” she said. “Now these companies are going to go public, and there is going to be even more money.” Ted Egan, San Francisco’s chief economist, said the eye-popping prices come after a “major adjustment” during COVID, when tens of thousands fled the city, according to state population estimates , chilling the housing market. During that time, San Francisco went from being extremely expensive compared with most cities to just expensive, Egan said. Rents that were once three times the national average are now a little more than double. Even so, “our rents are growing much faster than in other places, and AI is the big reason for that,” said Egan, who himself made the choice to relocate out of San Francisco to a smaller city outside the Bay Area. But the consequences extend well beyond the housing market. Rising prices are forcing City Hall to confront a broader question: Who can still afford to live in San Francisco if the recovery continues at this pace? San Francisco prices long ago pushed out a good chunk of the working-class population. But the appealing new image means that even some high-earning workers can’t afford to stay — fueling the fear that the city is becoming a haven solely for millionaire AI and tech workers. “This is not an issue that is unique to lower-income workers versus middle-class versus even tech workers,” said Supervisor Bilal Mahmood, who recently clashed with the mayor over grocery affordability legislation . “Every single person I represent in District 5 has said it is too expensive to live here.” Lurie told The Standard it shouldn’t be — and can’t remain that way if the recovery is to last. “I want families working in every industry to be able to stay and afford to live here,” he said, adding that San Francisco’s economic recovery is dependent on a diverse workforce outside the tech sector. Lurie is acutely aware that San Francisco has ridden a series of tech booms and busts over the past three decades. While AI is fueling the latest resurgence, the city can’t afford to become overly dependent on a single industry again, he said: “It cannot be one industry, and that’s why we’re talking to business leaders of all backgrounds, saying, ‘We want you here.’” Part of that strategy is recruiting universities to the city, including Vanderbilt , which Lurie hopes will create a more stable mix of jobs and activity beyond the AI sector. He said the city is talking to universities focused not just on technology but on arts, culture, and manufacturing. “We have focused on how we attract universities. Not one, but multiple universities downtown. How do we get more professors and teachers, and how do we have more life in our downtown core?” Diversifying the workforce, however, will require far more housing. Lurie pointed to his signature Family Zoning Plan , which he said will pave the way for tens of thousands more housing units over the next five years. He is also working with Supervisor Myrna Melgar to shore up funds for affordable housing through the city’s Housing Trust Fund . “We need to build more housing. For decades, we in this very progressive city have said no to new neighbors,” Lurie said. But affordability is about more than housing, he pointed out. He has also zeroed in on two of the biggest recurring expenses for families: childcare and transportation. He noted that San Francisco is “the first city in the country to provide access to free early childhood care ” for certain families with children up to age 5. “I’ve had many parents say, ‘You’re saving me $36,000 a year per child,’” Lurie said, emphasizing that San Francisco is the first city to offer such a robust program. ( Take that, Mamdani .) “If they have two, that’s $72,000. It’s made a big difference for some families.” Lurie has also worked to qualify a local parcel tax for the November ballot that is expected to generate around $150 million annually for Muni, plus another $10 million to strengthen transit services. “I want people to be able to get around our city so they don’t have to use rideshare, they don’t have to buy a car, they don’t have to have car insurance, they don’t have to pay for monthly parking.” Cyrus Hall, a transportation advocate, said Lurie’s support is a major boost. “The fact that he is popular and the fact that he is willing to spend political capital on this is great,” Hall said. A thriving transportation system is critical for working-class families who can’t afford car expenses and rely on an affordable public transit system to get around town, Hall said. But Lurie admits that some of his efforts will take time — long after he leaves office — before families feel the broader financial impact. “The unfortunate part is it’s not going to be solved overnight,” Lurie said. “When you have 30-plus years of not building enough housing, it’s going to take us years and years to get there, if not longer.” Critics say that’s exactly the problem. Whether the Family Zoning Plan will make a meaningful difference is debatable. San Francisco faces a state mandate to plan for more than 80,000 new homes by 2031 . The city completed 2,832 units in 2025, with roughly half designated as 100% affordable, according to the Department of Building Inspection. So far this year, 413 units have been completed, 276 of them affordable. “The problem with affordability in San Francisco is we are always working on the thing that we should have been working on 10 years ago,” said Mahmood, who is a renter. “The city is doing the bare minimum to comply with state laws, rather than thinking about how to fundamentally solve the problem.” Laura Foote, executive director of YIMBY Action, said San Francisco is “at best treading water” on solving the housing crisis. She argues that the city should pursue more aggressive short-term measures while waiting for new housing to be built. More immediate action to lower costs, Foote said, could include declaring a housing emergency to streamline production, waiving all impact fees, or proposing “ single-stair reform ,” which would allow certain apartment buildings to have one exit stairway instead of the required two. “I’m not saying they are doing nothing,” Foote said. “But there are bolder actions they are not taking that would have an impact today.” Advocates worry that without immediate action, San Franciscans across the socioeconomic spectrum will continue to leave. They range from hospital workers and police officers who were born in the city to young parents who hoped to raise first-generation San Franciscans but are giving up on that dream because it feels unattainable. Kim Tavaglione, executive director of the San Francisco Labor Council, warned of a future in which restaurant, hotel, and construction workers can’t live in the city they serve, and first responders are forced to turn down jobs because commuting to a San Francisco hospital isn’t possible. “There is nowhere for them to go,” said Tavaglione. She worries that Lurie, an heir to the Levi Strauss family fortune, is relying on “ corporations and the billionaires, the millionaires ,” to rebuild San Francisco, “but without a plan on where people are going to live.” “Working people are the only ones who keep neighborhoods vibrant,” she said. “So losing working people will destroy neighborhoods.” Whether San Francisco’s comeback becomes a broad-based recovery — or a boom that benefits primarily those who can already afford it — may be the question that defines Lurie’s mayoralty.

SF was headed for Mamdani-style grocery stores. Those plans have been spiked

Supervisor Bilal Mahmood said Mayor Daniel Lurie and another lawmaker have derailed part of his government-backed grocery store proposal after it was kept off the agenda of a committee hearing. He said Amazon also played a role in its destruction. The proposal, a two-part ballot measure authored by Mahmood last month, would establish a fund to subsidize grocery stores and levy a tax on vacant supermarkets and pharmacies owned by large businesses. Mahmood said he received a call Thursday afternoon from Supervisor Connie Chan, chair of the Budget Committee, informing him that the tax proposal would be stricken from Wednesday’s Budget and Finance Committee agenda. Chan told Mahmood of her disapproval and signaled that the mayor was opposed to the legislation, he said. “This is frankly just bad governance at the board,” said Mahmood. Mahmood said Lurie and Chan’s intervention makes it difficult for the proposal to move forward since it needs to be heard by the full Board of Supervisors by late July to make it to the November ballot. The dispute highlights competing visions for reviving San Francisco’s economy. Mahmood argues that vacant grocery and pharmacy sites should face financial pressure to reopen or lease to another operator, while Lurie has emphasized incentives and public-private partnerships to encourage businesses to return downtown. “Mayor Lurie is working to bring grocery stores to San Francisco’s communities,” his spokesperson, Charles Lutvak, said in a statement. “More taxes won’t achieve that. We support the Affordable Grocery Fund and will continue working with Supervisor Mahmood and the entire board to bring more grocery stores to the city.” Robyn Burke, a spokesperson for Chan, said the supervisor “agrees” with the intent of the measure, “but she also understands that much work needs to be done to this measure. Supervisor Mahmood has amendments he wants to make to his legislation. With that, she came to the conclusion that this measure is not ready at this time.” Mahmood says he has faced stiff opposition from business groups opposed to the proposal, including Amazon. The supervisor said a lobbyist for Amazon suggested last month that the retail giant could mount a campaign against the tax and requested that its vacant Whole Foods storefront on Market Street be exempt from the legislation. The supervisor declined to grant the exemption. Amazon lobbyist David Noyola denied this. “Amazon is in full overdrive trying to kill this ballot measure,” Mahmood told The Standard, adding that the company doesn’t “want to be held accountable for the zombie stores they hold,” using a term critical of companies that close a storefront but continue to hold the lease. Pro-business groups, including the Chamber of Commerce and Advance SF, have expressed skepticism about the idea to the supervisor. Nationally, the idea has proved controversial as moderate Democrats contend with a growing populist fervor within their party and the country reels from an affordability crisis. Amazon’s Whole Foods site on Market shuttered in 2023 after being open for a little over a year, emblematic of the anxieties surrounding downtown’s post-pandemic economy and worsening street conditions at the time. Since then, Lurie and others have launched efforts to rehabilitate the neighborhood, as office vacancies remain a challenge. Recent figures show some recovery as artificial intelligence companies increase demand. In April, the Downtown Development Corporation, a group created by Lurie’s allies in an effort to revitalize the neighborhood, announced a $25 million initiative to help businesses with below-market rate loans and move-in grants. Mahmood said he is spearheading the ballot measure because of the growing problem of disappearing supermarkets and pharmacies across the city, as well as rising food prices that are a national problem. Mahmood’s district covers the Tenderloin, a neighborhood known for a lack of pharmacies and supermarkets. The city in 2024 opened a free grocery store for low-income residents in the Bayview. Mahmood’s ballot measure would have a dual purpose. It would create a fund, fueled by philanthropic dollars or city coffers, to subsidize the conversion of corner stores into grocery stores with fresh foods or, as New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani has suggested, to lease out city-owned spaces at below-market rates to affordable grocers. It would also tax vacant grocery stores and pharmacies operated by large chains at $3 per square foot in the first year, $5 in the second, and $10 annually thereafter, capped at $250,000. Mahmood maintains that the tax would not affect small businesses, and that the affected companies would be able to avoid the penalty if they lease their vacant space to someone else, abandon their lease so someone else can take it over, or reactivate the storefront themselves. He said the argument businesses have used to defend closures — that crime and homelessness make it difficult to run a storefront — doesn’t pass muster. “I recognize during COVID there were concerns, but the data show that crime is down,” he said. “That excuse is no longer valid.” Amazon’s vacant Whole Foods site is roughly 65,000 square feet. A report from the city controller on the proposal’s cost is pending, said Mahmood. He claims the measure could generate several million dollars in tax revenue. Noyola pushed back against Mahmood’s description of Amazon’s position. “That’s an inaccurate characterization of a conversation I had with Supervisor Mahmood. Full stop,” the lobbyist said, adding that the business community at large tried to propose an exemption for the downtown neighborhood, not for the Whole Foods site specifically. Mahmood stood by his account, saying Noyola told him Amazon spent $250,000 opposing Proposition D — the Overpaid CEO Tax that failed in June — and could spend a similar amount opposing his measure. New York City’s Mamdani, whose progressive politics have proved popular after a slate of congressional wins by democratic socialist candidates during the city’s June primary, announced his first city-owned grocery store in May at an affordable housing complex in the Bronx. The SF Board of Supervisors’ rules committee is set to vote Monday on the fund aspect of Mahmood’s law. Mahmood said he has four supporters of his proposal: Supervisors Cheyenne Chen, Danny Sauter, Stephen Sherrill, and Myrna Melgar. He would need a vote from one more supervisor to move the fund measure from the full board to the November ballot.

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STATUTORY signing duty: indictments 'signed by the foreman' (Penal Code 940); presides

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judicial assignments; court administration (CRC 10.603); CEO direction

The Abatement Appeals Board provides a final review process for City permitting decisions. It ensures fair and efficient adjudication of permit-related disputes before an impartial panel. The board holds authority to make binding decisions on appeals concerning notices of abatement.

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