A go-to criticism against District 5 Supervisor Dean Preston from his opponents — in and out of politics — is that he blocks housing.
Candidates hoping to unseat him in next week’s election point to sites like 400 Divisadero St., the location of the long-shuttered Touchless Car Wash, as a prime example.
A billboard on Divisadero, paid for by the public pressure group GrowSF, reads, “That car wash should be affordable homes: Bilal Mahmood will fix it.” Mahmood and fellow supervisor candidate Scotty Jacobs doubled down on Preston-bashing with a Halloween-themed mock “funeral” this weekend at the car wash site, replete with cardboard tombstones lamenting the “death” of would-be homes at different addresses around the city.
But the truth is more complicated: A developer acquired 400 Divisadero St. in June, and it is expected to become more than 200 units of housing. So why is it still a key issue in this election cycle?
“Any notion that I blocked housing there is 100 percent made up,” Preston said. Though he mentioned disappointment at the low level of affordable units in the new project, Preston says he doesn’t oppose the most recent project proposal, which includes more than 200 market-rate units and 20 affordable ones.
While he pushed for a higher percentage of affordable units in earlier proposals before he became supervisor, Preston said the agonizing process, which has gone on for nearly 10 years, can be blamed on developers who walked away, market conditions, and proposed deals with the mayor that fell through.
Site timeline:
- After the 2015 upzoning of the Divisadero corridor by then-Supervisor London Breed, applications started coming in to demolish the longtime gas station and carwash to build housing.
- Preston fought the change in favor of higher affordability requirements.
- A preliminary application was filed in June 2015 for 152 units, plus retail.
- Preston, then a community organizer, called for more affordable housing.
- A follow-up 2017 proposal was for 177 units, and residents again called for more affordable units on-site, but there was little opposition to the development itself.
- Supervisor Vallie Brown, in 2018, amended Breed’s legislation to increase the affordability requirement on the Divisadero Corridor.
- By 2019, the city’s Planning Commission approved 186 units, 37 of which (20 percent) were to be affordable.
- The long approval process was attributed to legislation changing zoning and affordable housing requirements.
Preston, who was running for supervisor in 2019, demanded 33 percent affordability, but he was unsuccessful; the approval went through. His demands, Preston said, didn’t block or delay anything.
“These folks characterize any efforts to achieve affordable housing as blocking housing, and that’s a really dishonest argument,” he said.
The deal ultimately fell through. The developer dropped out, and an update last year from the site’s owners called the project “financially impractical” because the cost of new construction in San Francisco is “the highest in the world.” Still, the owners said they would continue to seek a developer.
By then, Preston was already agitating for another development on the site.
In the 2022 budget cycle, Preston, Mayor Breed, and then-budget chair Supervisor Hillary Ronen came to an agreement to earmark some $40 million to acquire 400 Divisadero St. and other sites for 100-percent-affordable housing. At the time, Breed’s office praised Ronen for negotiating the deal.
Both Ronen and Preston say the 2022 deal was reached with the intent to acquire 400 Divisadero. That didn’t happen.
Despite “a commitment from the mayor to acquire that site,” Preston said, Breed “pulled the plug” on a pending deal to build. As a result, the shuttered carwash sat unused until new plans materialized this summer.
“It’s absurd that anyone would try to say that Dean Preston did not try or did not want affordable housing at that site,” Ronen said.
She called the billboards implying Preston blocked housing at the carwash site a sort of “Trumpism.”
Now what?
The Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation nonprofit reportedly entered into a contract in 2022 with the site’s owners for affordable housing, with the understanding that city funds would be forthcoming; an email from TNDC to Preston’s office shows its leadership expected the site would be acquired. But when the money from the city didn’t come through, the contract expired.
At 400 Divisadero Street we are currently holding a funeral for the thousands of units of housing Dean Preston has blocked. All are welcome to join us in mourning. pic.twitter.com/6FHDcbjtpI
— David Broockman (@dbroockman) October 26, 2024
Neither TNDC nor the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development returned requests for comment, but the mayor’s office told the Chronicle last year that it could not show favoritism to one nonprofit or specific location.
Most recently, 4Terra Investments has moved in to build a mixed-use project on the site, with only about 10 percent affordable units.
Mahmood said that Preston’s repeated pushes for more affordability at 400 Divisadero contributed to the delays that preceded the recent proposal, though it is unclear whether that is true.
“I think the reason a lot of people are focused on it is that it … establishes the clear philosophical difference between Dean and myself, and it also speaks to a property that Dean has been involved with,” said Mahmood.
Jacobs, Preston’s other campaign rival, said Preston’s earlier advocacy for more affordability made the site too expensive to build on, but he provided no evidence of that. At a recent District 5 forum, Jacobs said, “It is critical that we have a supervisor who is not blocking high-quality housing projects because of ideology, and those projects include 400 Divis.”
Jacobs declined to comment on more recent delays for which Preston blames the mayor. Meanwhile, Jacobs has opposed an affordable housing development on Parcel K in Hayes Valley, which voters approved years ago and has not materialized.
Autumn Looijen, another candidate for District 5 supervisor, also implied that Preston was at fault in a statement to Mission Local earlier this year.
“Have you walked by the abandoned carwash site at 400 Divisadero? It was approved for 182 homes five years ago … but was tied up in delays and never built,” Looijen wrote. “Dean is insisting on 100 percent affordable, and blamed the Mayor when he couldn’t get it done.”
Looijen, too, opposes development of Parcel K as affordable housing.
Preston, along with fellow supervisors, has voted against some projects, including past votes to overturn the Planning Department’s approval of developments at 469 Stevenson St. (seeking an environmental impact report) and changes to 450 O’Farrell St. plans (seeking larger, family-sized units). The project at 469 Stevenson was later approved for development but stalled, and new plans for 450 O’Farrell have emerged.
Preston noted that he has voted for more than 30,000 new homes, mostly affordable, and a lawsuit to diminish that track record was dismissed by a judge. When it comes to 400 Divisadero, he said advocates for more housing could have stepped in to pressure the mayor in 2022 to follow through on her promise to fund affordable housing on the site.
“Instead, they tried to weaponize the situation there, and nonsensically blame my office for the fact that the lot is empty,” he said.
The important thing is that this project has been in the works for TEN YEARS, with nada to show for it.
Seems to me they’re trying to distract from Parcel K in Hayes Valley, where Dean Preston has consistently pushed the mayor for action on long-promised affordable housing, while Mahmood said he opposed it earlier this year before later reconsidering, and Jacobs still opposes it. That doesn’t fit their false narrative, so they want us to think about other sites (where Dean also did not actually delay housing).
The big eared dude in the photo ops is none other than Corey Smith, SFHAC Director, a lobbying form for luxury and market rate developers. Corey Smith is the same sanctimonious prig who filed a flatulent and frivolous lawsuit (a judge quickly tossed it) against the sitting supervisor’s housing record. Smith and Scotty party zone Jacobs (who also filed a frivolous and feeble minded) charge against Preston for his relationship with the Democratic Socialists of America/DSA. The joke’s on you boys.
The YIMBY/Bilal mantra is build more luxury highrises and soon the price will swoop ever lower so normal workers will be able to afford them. It’s an ignoramus’s theory.
They insist that more means lower prices, but absolutely refuse to address the key problem: if projects don’t “pencil out” now (you know, before soaring supply depresses costs for renters and buyers), they most certainly won’t be financially feasible if the developer’s return on investment as a result of so many luxury high-rises being built.
There is already a surplus of purchase and rental units, but the prices haven’t come down (as guaranteed by the YIMBY platform). The failed projects (The Oak – 55 Oak Street) never sold a single unit. WIth all those extra units just collecting dust, the price was supposed to go down so much that the building would fill up. The failed “for sale” model has been replaced by a “for rent” model, but the building is basically empty.
The same will happen with the unaffordable component of the Housing Element – the 36,000 “market rate” units that the city (which is actually developers – but it’s better to blame government than private businesses) is “required” to build won’t go down, down, down in price. That fable didn’t come true on mid-Market when there were hundreds of thousands of square feet of vacant office space … the only “miracle” was that Ed Lee fell for the gimmick and gave Twitter a bargain.
SF let private developers and other business interests Manhattanize downtown. Though that worked pretty well for them for sixty or so years, it isn’t working so well now. In fact it’s so bad, that the “pro-housing” crowd wants all those empty office towers to become apartments, which of course is impossible. Maybe we could use downtown as a reminder that business interests are precisely that. The are not city planners and should stop getting the opportunity to prove that over and over.
Who called in the ringer?
Well stated.
“Supply & demand” is a nice theory that can explain some of the price movement in highly-liquid, transparent, and fungible goods and services. The theory fails to explain price movements in a human necessity such as shelter, which in the U.S. has become a speculative asset. As prices go up, more supply will be added, which in turn gets bid up, leading to more supply, which gets bid up, etc. Prices don’t come down because of additional supply, because that supply is mostly targeted to be bid up (e.g. luxury condos). The only way for market prices to level off, let alone come down, is for the conditions that fostered the speculative mania to end (e.g. SF’s commercial real estate).
In a speculative asset bubble, the only way to provide an “affordable” new version of that asset is for government to bypass the “market” and set the targeted shelter at an affordable price.
Letting real estate developers run amok in the absurd hope that it will lead to lower prices is madness.
The as of now five down votes prove my point.
If what I say is incorrect, do what no one has yet done: explain how lower market value of a project (as promised by building more) will make a project “pencil out” when it doesn’t at a higher market value.
The YIMBY talking/squawking point is just that. Well, and a lie.
What a horrifying circus. Downtown is now entirely Planet of the Apes and according to luxury development lobbyist (and frivolous lawsuit abuser) Corey Smith, along with pathological liar and carpet bagging shape shifter candidate Bilal Mahmood 🤬and candidate snotty Scotty party zone Jacobs………these three goobers and their billionaire backers seek to suck your brains…….among other body parts ……and your votes.
REJECT them. They will give you syphilis.
Is it physically possible for you to post without making juvenile personal attacks on politicians you don’t like?
None of those mentioned are politicians. They are carpet bagger CANDIDATES funded by billionaires like Michael Moritz and Republican Bill Oberndorf.
……along with a shill who makes his living by exclusively lobbying for luxury development in San Francisco.
The fact that projects are ‘approved’ after being massively delayed is supposed to be considered a victory? Look at 469 Stevenson – detractors politically redeem the delay by OK’ing it when economic conditions make it no longer viable, that achieves their goals of killing it, just indirectly so they can pretend the failure is not related to their actions. How many projects have faltered due to unrealistic demands for community benefits or affordable housing percentages? We have no hope of building the amount of units needed without a by-right/ministerial review process
I wish this article went a little deeper. Why hasn’t anything been built there in 10 years? What has Dean done to make sure we can build housing in 2 years instead of 10? Why did Dean and the supervisors even have the power to block something that meets all the building, zoning, and planning codes?
This isn’t just happening at this one location; it takes this long all throughout the city, and the inaction of Dean and the other supervisors is so frustrating.