[Scpg] FARMING THE CITY Can S.F.'s vacant lots become garden plots?

[Wesley Roe and Santa Barbara Permaculture Network]

FARMING THE CITY
Can S.F.'s vacant lots become garden plots?

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/03/21/HOEIV3PM1.DTL

Matthew Green, Special to The Chronicle

Saturday, March 22, 2008

If San Francisco resident Kevin Bayuk has his way, every unused plot 
of land in this densely packed city, from narrow, shaded alleys to 
concrete-laden yards, will be transformed into organic-food-producing gardens.

Bayuk and other urban gardeners with big dreams but little capital 
are striving to create a metropolis that can feed itself.

It's one thing to support local organic agriculture, as in the 
region's farms that sell their goods at farmers' markets. But for 
Bayuk, a 30-year-old landscaper and gardener who lives in the 
Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, a truly local food system means being 
able to walk down the block from your house to harvest a bowl of 
salad greens for dinner.

Over the past year, as a project for the San Francisco Permaculture 
Guild, a group of gardening and design professionals, educators, 
activists and volunteers, Bayuk has been on the hunt for open space 
in San Francisco.

Bayuk and the guild envision what amounts to a reincarnation of 
tenant farming, in which gardens are built and tended in private 
vacant lots by volunteer growers. Unlike tenant farming, however, 
landowners would not be paid, and the produce would go to local food 
banks and possibly even be sold at farmers' markets.

Most owners intend to develop these lots, but the permit process 
often takes years, and during that time the land sits fallow and 
sometimes blights the neighborhood. Some owners don't live in the 
city and are unaware of the state of their properties. That's the 
perfect time, Bayuk says, to install a temporary organic garden. If 
the lot has exposed earth, he says, the soil would be tested, and if 
it's not contaminated, seeds and starts could be planted directly in 
the ground. If the lot is paved, container gardens or beds could be installed.

Bayuk recently compiled a surprisingly large list of privately owned 
vacant sites - called infill lots - throughout the city. The 1,058 
lots amount to about 127 acres, or 5.5 million square feet, a fairly 
significant amount of unused land for a city that measures 49 square 
miles, or roughly 31,300 acres.

The San Francisco office of the assessor-recorder conducted its own 
search in its database and, surprisingly, found more than double the 
number of lots Bayuk had found (see box).

"I was shocked by how many (vacant) properties there are and the 
sizes of them," Bayuk said "While these plots are vacant - and before 
they're developed - there's a great opportunity to use them for gardening."
The proposition

Bayuk plans to send the property owners on his list letters asking 
permission for free, temporary use of their land. In exchange, 
gardeners will assume all risk, releasing the owners from liability. 
Bayuk also said soil testing and remediation would be done on a 
case-by-case basis depending on what the lot had been used for, 
whether toxins are suspected and whether weeds are substantial. He 
notes that, in other parts of the country, universities have donated 
soil testing services.

Landowners wouldn't be charged and, at the very least, the project 
would take care of weed abatement, a costly procedure that property 
owners often have to pay for anyway, he said.

Bayuk's appeal stresses the idea that a garden beautifies a property 
and could increase both its value and the value of neighboring 
properties. Furthermore, Bayuk makes clear that the garden would be 
transitory and guarantees its removal upon request, with as little as 
10 days' notice.

"I have no idea what the response will be," he said, acknowledging 
that some property owners, still concerned about liability issues, 
will decide to keep the land empty. But he hopes others will view the 
invitation as a mutually beneficial arrangement: "I can't imagine the 
downside for the property owner," he said.
Hard sell

But such a proposition might be a hard sell.

"Unless my client was disposed toward gardening, I don't see that 
they would particularly care to do that," said J.J. Panzer, a 
property manager and broker with Real Management Co. in San 
Francisco. "The way that I would see it would be, first of all, there 
really isn't a whole lot of benefit and an awful lot of liability of 
having random, unauthorized people on your property. As a 
professional, I would definitely recommend against it."

Panzer argues that a release of liability doesn't stop someone from 
suing the owner because individuals may not be covered even if 
general permission is given.

"I can see that some landlords might say, 'Hey, beautify the property 
- enhance the value of land next door,' " Panzer said. "My opinion 
would still be if you have a vacant lot, keep it vacant. If you want 
to start a garden, do it yourself."

There is also the issue of where the water for the garden will come 
from and other hidden costs.

Bayuk says he understands potential obstacles and hopes to present 
owners with a range of options. Liability concerns would be assessed 
on a case-by-case basis.

"As I understand it, in some cases where the owner is intending to 
develop the property with structures at some point and they already 
have homeowner's insurance, then they are likely covered by their 
policy for personal liability," Bayuk said. Other options include a 
"hold harmless" clause, standard in community-garden lease 
agreements, or the creation of a garden club that can purchase 
liability insurance policies.

Regarding water, Bayuk said if the property has a meter, the Public 
Utilities Commission has established a precedent for subsidizing 
irrigation at some community gardens, or a payment arrangement can be 
made with the property owner.

Failing that, "the site can still be used productively through an 
intelligent drought-tolerant perennial plant selection. With the 
appropriate amount of mulch applied in harmony with rains, many 
useful, low-maintenance, productive plants can be effectively 
established and will thrive," he said.

Factory farming

Bayuk argues that the need to produce food locally is just as 
imperative now as it was during World War II, when nearly 20 million 
Americans countered food rationing by cultivating Victory Gardens on 
rooftops and in backyards, and in some cases on public land, 
including portions of Golden Gate Park.

A modern-day victory garden campaign in San Francisco, independent of 
Bayuk's project, was spearheaded last year by a group of local 
artists and activists. This incarnation offers training and materials 
to city residents in an effort to turn as many backyards as possible 
into productive growing areas. (For more information, 
www.sfvictorygardens.org.)

Nationally, interest in buying local foods has skyrocketed: From 1994 
to 2006, there was a nearly 150 percent increase in the number of 
farmers' markets (up to more than 4,300), according to figures from 
the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Bayuk sees this trend as a direct alternative to what he views as the 
extreme environmental and health costs of industrial agriculture. 
Vast amounts of water, fossil fuels and pesticides are used by 
industrial farms to produce food and ship it to distant markets, not 
to mention the produce that spoils in transport. The average American 
meal travels about 1,500 miles from farm to plate, according to the 
Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture in San Francisco.

"If we grow food right where we're at," Bayuk said, "wherever we can, 
it will have an immense ripple effect. I can't imagine why we're not doing it."


Next week: Meet the guerrilla gardeners who don't ask permission to 
plant. The soil is there to be used, they say, whether property 
owners like it or not.

Foot by foot

Kevin Bayuk came up with his figures for how many vacant lots are in 
San Francisco by searching a UC Berkeley Geographic Information 
Systems database that locates privately owned vacant lots throughout 
urban areas in California. The addresses were then cross-referenced 
with the San Francisco County assessor-recorder's Web site to locate 
the addresses of the property owners.

Bayuk assumed that some of the data were outdated or inaccurate and 
might not always account for high-use areas like parking lots. When 
the San Francisco office of the assessor-recorder was questioned for 
this article about the accuracy of Bayuk's list, it conducted its own 
search in a private, continuously updated database. Surprisingly, the 
office found more than double the number of lots Bayuk found.

In addition to the 2,944 vacant private parcels (not including 
parking lots), the database also located 2,090 vacant city-owned 
lots, totaling more than 5,000 empty pieces of land in the city, 
according to Katie Muehlenkamp, an aide to Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting.

Bayuk said the discrepancy between his figures and the assessors' 
might be because of a different interpretation of "vacant." Bayuk 
counted only property with nothing built on it.
New culture

Permaculture is short for "permanent agriculture," a term coined in 
the 1970s by Australian Bill Mollison. It's defined as a design 
system for meeting human needs derived from patterns observed in 
natural systems.

-- The Urban Permaculture Guild is an educational nonprofit with 
offices in Oakland and Big Sur. www.urbanpermacultureguild.org.

-- San Francisco Permaculture Guild, www.permaculture-sf.org.

-- To reach Kevin Bayuk, e-mail him at kevin at uas.coop.