Condo Lottery Bypass Shot Down (for now)
June 11, 2009Ever skipped line at a club by paying off the bouncers? Well that’s essentially what was proposed for TIC owners who were waiting around to convert their units to condos.
You wanna do what? Get back in line, son.
We now have word that this measure has not been approved, which puts TIC owners in the difficult position of dealing with the unresponsive bouncers. From the June Edition of the “Plan C” Newsletter:
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We have disappointing news for TIC owners, and all San Franciscans who want to promote homeownership. The Mayor released his budget earlier this week, and he did not include the “condo bypass” proposal that has generated so much attention in the TIC community this spring. As most of you know, the condo bypass proposal (conceived by Supervisor Sean Elsbernd) would allow a one-time bypass of the condo lottery for TIC owners who were willing to pay an additional fee to the City. It would provide much-needed help to hundreds of TIC owners, generate millions of dollars to help address the City’s gaping deficit, and it hurt – nobody.
There were complicated issues to be worked out to get the condo bypass into the budget, no doubt. But with an earlier start (this idea has been around for many months) and better planning, this innovative plan could have made it into the budget, and would have had the chance to be debated and discussed by City Hall. Bringing this idea forward as part of the budget was its best chance for adoption – because opponents who wanted to vote down the condo bypass would have had to come up with millions of dollars of painful cuts to address the loss of revenue.
We have met with the Mayor on this topic, and we have impressed on him how important we think it is to address the growing backlog of condo lottery applicants. We understand that the condo bypass idea is not dead, and that there is a chance that it could be resurrected later in the year.
The Mayor and the supervisors need to hear from all of you that the condo lottery problem is not going away! Click here to send an email to the Mayor and the Supervisors – tell them how disappointed you are that the condo bypass won’t be in the City budget – and tell them that the condo lottery is broken, it’s getting worse, and it isn’t going to go away without reform.
