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SF, UCSF community benefits package for Parnassus Heights project not enforceable

From NBC Bay Area, January 4, 2021, and SF Examiner, January 11, 2021

According to NBC Bay Area, “Under UCSF’s Comprehensive Parnassus Heights Plan, UCSF’s Helen Diller Medical Center would be transformed, with a new modern hospital that would increase its inpatient capacity by 42 percent and its emergency department by 80 percent. The entire project is expected to be completed by 2030.”

In addition, “Under a new memorandum of understanding (MOU) between San Francisco and UCSF, a benefits package to accompany the new hospital plan will include the creation of 1,263 units of housing for the UCSF workforce; the designation of about 40 percent of all new and existing UCSF housing as affordable units for low-income residents; $20 million toward transportation improvements; and the hiring of city residents for 30 percent of construction and permanent entry-level jobs.”

Writing later in the SF Examiner, Ida Mojadad reports that “Supervisors at the Land Use and Transportation Committee meeting [on January 11] called for more time to negotiate stronger community benefit commitments from UCSF, seeking a delay before the project is approved by the University of California Board of Regents. They also sought a legally enforceable agreement, which would require review and approval from the Board of Supervisors.”

“The supervisors’ options to shape the project are rather limited,” Mojadad continued. “As a state entity, UCSF is exempt from local land laws and voluntarily negotiated a memorandum of understanding with The City, largely through the Mayor’s Office.”

Read NBC Bay Area’s coverage of the MOU here (~2 min.) and Ida Mojadad’s Examiner piece on the supervisors’ reactions here (~ 2 min.).

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