In late July, a San Francisco Chronicle reporter’s photo of a legion of older, white people attending a neighborhood meeting regarding the towering housing development planned for the site of the Marina Safeway became the latest touchstone for rancorous online debate about San Francisco development.
These old people, we were told by charming internet housing warriors, are the reason your monthly rent exceeds the asking price of a decent used Lexus. These obstinate old people are the reason you can’t afford to live here.
Before we dissect this broad claim, it warrants mentioning that community meetings like the one depicted in the snapshot that launched a thousand quips are now merely a repository for performative outrage: Thanks to state law, resident complaints can’t really derail housing developments anymore. The online blowback? Reciprocal performative outrage.
But, to address the matter at hand, are greedy old people the reason you can’t afford to live here? Your humble narrator talked to around a dozen developers, architects, development professionals and land-use experts and the consensus is: They might be a reason. But not the reason.
“Housing costs,” says one former longtime Planning Department official, “are the compounding of at least three separate policy failures: Federal affordable-housing defunding since the 1980s, exclusionary zoning with racist roots, and a permitting process that legislated NIMBYism.”
“Picking one villain lets everyone else off the hook.”
The online vitriol directed at a roomful of old people nonplussed at the idea of a housing development bearing no small resemblance to the stern of a Princess Cruise ship largely came from young, pro-development, “common sense” moderates — YIMBYs, “Abundance” types, and others in the “Build, baby, build!” arm of the Democratic Party.
Of note, Mayor Daniel Lurie and Supervisor Stephen Sherrill are both relatively young, ostensibly pro-development, “common sense” moderates. They also oppose the project proposed atop Armistead Maupin’s “Social Safeway” site.
The invective should also, logically, extend to them.
And not just them. Yes, San Francisco made it unduly burdensome to build here. Until last year, vast swaths of San Francisco were height-restricted to 40 feet, with density controls that wouldn’t realistically even let you go that high.
But this was, spoiler alert, a “Murder on the Orient Express”-type problem: Everyone was guilty here. To single out older people on folding chairs and fail to indict a top-down, byzantine governmental building and permitting system makes for a hell of a hot take. But, again, it lets everyone else off the hook.
Not that long ago, one development professional remembers, simply being assigned a city planner to go over elements of the California Environmental Quality Act on your project could require almost a year.
That is: Almost a year of waiting to get the person who would then determine if you would have to wait even longer while undertaking endless studies and mitigations.
“That had nothing to do with old people,” he laughs. “Getting your building permits issued? It wasn’t little old ladies slowing that down. That was corruption that slowed that down.”
“The No. 1 impediment to building in San Francisco is the cost of land,” he continues. “No. 2 is the cost of capital. Then it’s the cost of materials and labor, and then the time the government makes you take. I don’t know that I’d put cranky old neighbors in the top four or five.”
Yes, you can partially turn your ire on intransigent neighborhood people over the fact that, until recently, every permit in San Francisco was discretionary and could be challenged.
But it’s harder to skewer neighborhood folks regarding the decades of scleroticism and corruption within the building department, which benefited connected fixers.
Agonizing hard costs, meanwhile, are the result of factors well beyond the municipal level: “All the copper and switchgear,” says a longtime city developer, “it’s all going to these fucking AI data centers.”
Local builders are competing with everyone else here. And not just in hard costs: Private equity could put its money into housing or oil futures or frozen concentrated orange juice.
Developers tell me that a project generally needs to pencil out to 20 percent gross profit to attract equity investors. Doing the simple math, the developer continues, if it costs $600,000 to $700,000 per unit to develop, the necessary profit is $140,000.
So, that’s a lot. And, in the present day, high interest rates have thrown off that equation. To spur development, the city has moved to slash the percentage of affordable housing required in mid-sized to large developments from 15 percent to 5 percent — but still very few are building.
Labor and construction costs in San Francisco are high and, in the end, so are the rents and/or purchase prices required of new construction.
“People build based on maximum rent,” says a longtime city developer. Most builders, he adds “will hold units vacant until they can get those rents. The only way to get more affordable housing is to finance it and subsidize it.”
Something YIMBYs get right: A theme that emerges again and again talking with land-use experts is that the city put itself in a bad place with downzonings in the 1970s.
To buy into San Francisco, you presently need a pile of cash, a time machine, or both. But if you could use that time machine to go back several generations and enable regional developers and mid-sized contractors to build the unremarkable 12-unit buildings that so many people desire to live in, it would’ve made a difference today.
But how much more affordable would San Francisco be if we’d built more? The answer, again, is more complicated than bros on Twitter would have you believe.
In 2001, the Planning Department commissioned a study tackling the question of what might happen to the cost of home ownership if, by some alchemy, 10 percent more units were dropped into the city overnight.
The answer: It would knock an estimated 4.1 percent off the price of buying a house. If you found this much money in a sack it would be like a gift from the leprechauns. But, in terms of real-estate purchasing, it is not transformational: Let’s say the median home sales price in San Francisco is $1.7 million. This would lower that by around $70,000, to $1.63 million.
That 2001 study, however, looked at more. It also estimated that if the city’s per capita income were to jump by 10 percent, it would lead to a 7.5 percent increase in house prices.
It’s worth taking a moment to think about this because, while you’d need to be a conjurer to add 10 percent to the housing stock instantaneously, adding vast wealth to the city at a moment’s notice is hardly the stuff of magic.
Since 2001, it has happened again and again and again — and the cost of housing has gone to infinity and beyond. Rents in San Francisco last month were up 26 percent from July 2025, and they were already obscenely high in 2025.
A tsunami of cash is about to wash over San Francisco, once more. And, here we come ‘Lizbeth, it’s The Big One: The Anthropic and OpenAI IPOs promise perhaps $2 trillion of tech stocks in the next year, much of which will be convertible into cash for young engineers to throw around like King Jaffe Joffer and outbid anyone and everyone.
This is an order of magnitude more than San Francisco, or any city, has ever dealt with.
If San Francisco had built more, it figures that this would have slowed down the rise in housing costs and helped us deal with the tech deluge. But the Planning Department’s own study indicates that it would only have mitigated the surge in costs, not actually lowered them, let alone kept housing “affordable.”
Sadly, we haven’t built all that much, and even City Hall’s best-laid plans won’t help a great deal: The city controller estimated that, in the most optimistic scenario, Mayor Lurie’s recent upzoning would usher in only 14,600 extra units over the next 20 years — and decrease rents by a maximum of $125 a month.
Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick but, again, not life-changing stuff. Meanwhile, the city’s per-capita income has grown immensely.
Even if this city had an efficient and rational development process — which hasn’t been the case for quite some time — it would have been vulnerable to a housing crisis.
Tech and AI are not manufacturing or even biotech: By and large, you don’t need warehouses or labs or factories, and you’re not bound by supply chains. One VC can have an epiphany and decide an app is the wave of the future and 2,000 well-compensated people can be expediently summoned to San Francisco.
The problem of the massive and economically fortuitous Baby Boom generation holding the lion’s share of the state’s housing stock is one that is going to resolve in the coming years — gradually, then suddenly. In the next decade, a tremendous amount of housing may yet come on the market. You all know why.
It’s not talked about enough how beneficial it would be to open more quality senior housing in this state; most every older person who moved in would open up a home for younger people.
So, again, it’s complicated. Meanwhile: Demonizing old people on the internet is fun and easy. Here’s a hot take about that photo of the Marina meeting: There is nothing new under the sun.
If, over the course of decades, from the 1970’s city-wide downzoning (for which you can thank the likes of Calvin Welch among Diane Feinstein for), you refuse to allow adequate housing to be created relative to demand, then the inevitable result will be chronic scarcity and runaway housing costs and, therefore massive gentrification, as those with more money outbid those with less for an artificially diminished and limited pool of housing.
The only way to sustainability address this problem is through the creation of more housing — a lot more housing. We went down the wrong path decades ago and now we must face up to the reality of our profound mistake and pivot as fast as possible to massively incentivize (as opposed to disincentivize as we currently still do) the creation of a massive amount of housing.
We did it before — in the wake of WW2– and we can do it again, albeit no longer via environmentally-damaging suburban sprawl, but rather via environmentally-sustainable urban infill and efficient land-use (i.e., densification supporting traditional walkable communities) within our existing urbanized footprint.
The best time to plant a tree is, of course, 5 decades ago — the next best time is now.
Karl, cogent post…thank you
I agree, we should be taxing things we don’t want, not taxing things we do want. But can we agree on what we don’t want?
I believe that most reasonable people do not want to have to competitively bid for a rental apartment on account of a ridiculously low ( ≈2%) vacancy rate (the lowest in the entire nation) that is the direct result of ill-conceived (anti) housing policies that continue to hamstring the creation of new housing.
Karl, the vacancy rate in SF is typically cited as being between 2% and 4%, which is low of course.
But that only counts housing units that are being offered for rental. There is a much larger number of vacant units that are off the market and so not included in the official vacancy rate.
There are various reasons for that, such as homes being sold or being remodeled. But there are also units kept off the market because owners do not want to be stuck with a “lifer” tenant. Our current rent control rules are clearly to blame for that behaviour, which would be totally illogical outside of a place with rent control.
I agree with your concerns regarding the abuse of rent control and its downsides, however new rental housing — thank to state law — is not subject to SF’s rent control ordinance. That being said, the specter of it potentially applying sometime in the future likely has a dampening effect on the creation of new rental housing nevertheless.
Give it a rest already.
Housing prices exploded after Clinton I deregulated Wall Street and mortgage finance was serialized for speculation and severed from connection to housing in communities.
SF had been more expensive than most other cities since the 80s, but was affordable to the base wage structure with some economizing elsewhere.
Post-repeal of Glass Steagall, housing prices detached from the wage base to serve Wall Street speculation.
Market rate construction shuts down when prices stop rising and 20%+ profits can’t be made, long before zoning becomes a constraint.
Affordable housing cannot scale for capital, it cannot scale for interest and it cannot scale for maintenance.
Housing lobbyists from nonprofits and developers insist that non of this is true, to just deregulate and give them a chance. But the math speaks for itself.
Hold your boos while I explain something:
I work in software and handle a lot of real-estate management companies and owner’s of multiple properties. And, I also own some rental property in SF.
1. Cost and Price are **NOT** directly related. I have a 4plex with a mortgage of 10k and the units barely cover the price plus maint plus tax plus insurance, etc… One of my clients has a similar 4 plex, with no mortgage, but she charges the same rent. Because *that is what people are willing to pay*. Making it cheaper for developers does NOT reduce rent.
2. Building thousands of 2M condos does not reduce the average price of affordable housing unless you’re willing to wait a decade in hopes that trickle-down “filtering” works. The reality is that my clients make a PILE of money on luxury condos so they push that theory. It’s complete BS with a city that has Defined borders and is a “destination city”. The result is Singapore, not Austin.
3. The affordable housing we need is seriously not making a 2M condo 1.7M. We need $2000/month 2 bedroom units near public transport.
4. Empty units are everywhere. Seriously. There are a TON of empty apartments. Like piles and piles of them. Why? Because owners want to sell a rent-controlled building with as few occupied units as possible. And why is that a problem? Because the rent board protects tenants and rentcontrol reduces the movement of people. One tenant in my building (rent control) pays under 2k for a beautiful 2 bedroom with a full basement and a backyard about a block from 24th and Harrison. It’s nicer than my own apartment. And I AM OK WITH THAT! However, if I wanted to sell the place, it would reduce my sale price substantially. Evicting them (a douche move) is seriously difficult, and once they get older and seriously NEED that rent control, it’s even harder. So land lords (at least all the ones I’ve had to work with) would prefer to keep a unit off the market entirely rather than rent to someone over 50. The solution? Maybe find a way to make it easier to have people move around, perhaps subsidize rent control so someone getting a $5k/month apartment for $2k carries a 3k subsidy when they move? I dunno. Alternatively, this no-rent-control business – WOW. You would not BELIEVE the stuff these owners do. They’ll jack up the rent like crazy instead of evicting you. You’re 90yrs old and they want you out: Guess what, your rent is now 50k/month. Pay or get out. And landlords LOVE it. They push the limits and THAT makes the overall rent market go up.
5. BMR housing: Scam. This was a compromise made by developers and investors to let them build luxury condos and pretend they are helping. Who the heck is “below market” when they need to pay 800k + a $1k HOA for a 1 bedroom? And then, when you get it, it’s basically tainted and you can only sell it to other BRM people and you can’t rent it eather. So “the best investment” is now really not so hot. Mostly, these go to nepo kids who’s parents give them a fat pile of money for a down payment.
Anyway. The only thing you can be 100% certain of is that rent control apartments are affordable housing. Building more luxury condos “might” reduce the cost of luxury condos. Making it easier to evict people pretty much screws everyone. BMR housing doesn’t really do anything (and they’re cutting it to 5% now anyway, as if that makes much of a difference). We need apartment buildings full of rent controlled units.
And the biggest thing we need to do is to convince people who think this tiktok level solution of “build more” is utter crap for SF and that people who actually want affordable housing in OUR LIFETIME are not NIMBY, those are the people who literally complained about affordable housing projects in the Marina and NOW support this luxury safeway thing (which i think is fine, btw). The NIMBY is the one who WANTS more luxury and doesn’t want a homeless shelter or section 8 housing “IN THEIR BACK YARD”.
/Rant
“Most builders, he adds, ‘will hold units vacant until they can get those rents.'”
In other words, it is impossible to build enough housing to lower rents, because as soon as rents get too low, builders won’t build. The YIMBY narrative is snake oil.
So if building more housing doesn’t mitigate soaring housing costs then, by your logic, the inverse must be true, i.e., demolishing housing will mitigate soaring housing costs.
Brilliant!
The most affordable housing is existing housing. The only ones who oppose demolition these days are the historic preservationists, who are a dying breed.
This statement is mostly false on multiple fronts: Builders don’t generally operate the apartments they build, and landlords don’t keep units of new market rate buildings empty. They might accept a lower fill rate to maximize revenue, but if they don’t fill the place 95% they’re going to go bankrupt. I’m guessing the “longtime city developer” this quote is attributed to is an affordable housing developer rather than a market rate developer, but regardless, the lack of attribution reduces the credibility of this claim.
Sir or madam —
You are mistaken.
JE
Builders have always only built if they can make money. The more they can make, the more they build. This creates more inventory over time. Housing policy needs to be thinking 30-50 years in the future instead of 2-3 years.
Damn, I like a lot of your articles, but you liberals and conservatives are so into the ‘market’ solutions, you cannot address the obvious solution that most regular people want. Social Housing….built by the city, or the state, etc, that is off market forever and owned by ‘us’. That building is community organized…by local architects, near transit……..not those fucking towers like in Cabrini. You all just can’t imagine the government actually serve the bottom half of your own citizens. Always your damn markets and bank solutions. My god. After the past 20 years of corporate landlords, and US gov’t bailouts of the banks….still…ohh….there must be too much regulation?
We built “social” housing in the 1960’s. They became crime filled cess pools and had to be demolished. Stop trying to reinvent failed policies. Like ‘Democratic Socialism’.
You cite a 2001 study modeling a hypothetical one time 10 percent supply bump and conclude building doesn’t move the needle much. Meanwhile Austin ran the actual decade long experiment: 30 percent stock growth from 2015 to 2024, triple the national rate. Median rent went from $1,546 to $1,296. That’s not a footnote, that’s a 16 percent decline in a city that was also absorbing a massive tech boom of its own. Rents in the cheap old buildings fell too, not just the glass towers. If you’re going to build a “supply doesn’t really work” argument, maybe don’t build it entirely on a 25 year old academic hypothetical while ignoring the city that just proved it wrong in real time.
And sure, SF has worse land costs and geography than Austin. Nobody’s arguing SF becomes Austin. But “we can’t build at Austin’s scale” and “building doesn’t lower rents” are two completely different claims, and the column spends 1,500 words quietly swapping one for the other so the second one sounds like it survived contact with evidence. It didn’t.
Also, “developers quoted anonymously say old people aren’t the real problem” is not exactly a peer reviewed finding. It’s a guy on background covering for a permitting system his industry has spent decades learning to route around, usually with a check.
Sir or madam —
It is hard to foresee San Francisco rapidly adding 30 percent to its housing stock like Austin — a city with seven times the square mileage and far lower land and labor costs. On top of that, real-estate professionals noted that the investors behind Austin’s building boom vastly overestimated the rents they could receive and took a massive bath on the process. As such, experts saw it as unlikely that this set of circumstances, which worked out great for renters in Austin, would be repeated in San Francisco.
San Francisco can — and must — add housing. Doing so in a way that meaningfully mitigates the surge in housing costs brought about by the vast influx of wealth will be a challenge.
Best,
JE
Totally understand Joe – but do you agree that it is true that building more housing would necessarily reduce rents?
Sir or madam —
I think building housing reduces rents but I think what jumps off the page both in the study and in lived experience is that per-capita wealth increasing gooses the price of housing more quickly and to a more extreme degree than adding to the housing supply. And wealth can come crashing into the city quickly while building is … slow.
I also think that lived experience will show that, to a large degree, housing prices are set by what the market will bear and not by development costs. I think the city should not make development like driving with the parking brake on, but I think it’d be naive to believe that, just because development costs are reduced, the asking price for housing will be reduced.
Does this mean we shouldn’t build? No, that’d be absurd. But it means we shouldn’t overpromise the results of building.
JE
Unfortunately for those merely seeking a place to live rather than an investment property, we now live in an age with surveillance pricing and algorithmically enhanced predators operating behind shell companies. We can’t seem to Whac-a-Mole any serious limits on this industry, relying instead on charming supply-and-demand economics.
God save the small landlords still out there.
Great reporting. This is all true, yet local residents protesting new housing development does affect what’s built. I’ve watched it first hand in berkeley where a rezoning project for some of the wealthier neighborhoods has been incredibly diluted because of outrage from residents who have benefited from redlining for decades. Sure, the city is still trying to meet state mandates, but their original plans to build thousands of units have dwindled to the bare minimum, and to the point where it will take years to find a developer who can or wants to actually do it. Those older activists still have the power to disrupt development they don’t want. And, yes, there’s still the old permitting processes and the market forces and the other forces at work, to the point where I’m starting to see (very late) that the market ain’t doing it. We need government investment in housing, and every neighborhood has to be included. No passes for the richer, historically exempt neighborhoods, even Pacific Heights (gasp!).
Thanks for a balanced article. Here are a couple of thoughts:
All these old people everyone is mad at are going to die as Joe was kind enough not to so blatantly point out and all that housing they live in, either own or rent, will become available. How much of it will be snapped up by speculative developers and not “young families” remains to be seen.
How many units can be fit on the typical San Francisco lot? And how much will they cost when built and ready for occupancy?
In terms of unbuilt units apparently the 7200 units at Candlestick are moving forward per a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, so you can cross that off the list of undeveloped but approved sites with lots of housing. The Chronicle says the Power Plant site in Dogpatch is full steam ahead. Also whatever happened to the Schlage Lock site?
The real problem is the affordability problem particularly now as there is all this money in the pockets of a relatively few folks in SF. Hard to build your way out of it and create affordable housing as the stats in Joe’s article proved.
Why do people in these comments always blame Calvin Welch? It is ridiculous.
And some day everyone who is now young will be old.
Hardly ridiculous — if one understands the history of downzoning in SF and Mr. Welch’s “pioneering” malign role in it!
Calvin Welch was instrumental in getting the Haight-Ashbury (H-A) neighborhood downzoned in the early 1970’s.
Prior to the downzoning, ≈40% of the neighborhood was African American. In the decades after the downzoning the African American population dropped precipitously as follows: 1980’s: down ≈28% to 25%; 1990’s: down 15% to 12%; 2000’s: down 9% to 7%; 2010’s: down to 5%; 2020’s: down to <4%.
Basically, Calvin's stifling of housing creation gentrified blacks and others of modest means out of the Haight-Ashbury while during this period he accumulated a mini-real estate empire (that has skyrocketed in ill-gotten value) in the H-A where he and his family still live.
Calvin has benefited quite handsomely via his downzoning and gentrification efforts!
That's why it's essential that people do their research and understand the negative and hypocritical effects of the anti-housing creation policies that Calvin, to this day, continues to advocated for.
There are many reasons for the shocking decline of the African-American population here (changing industries being one of them). You cannot seriously blame Calvin Welch for this. He can be a very cranky guy, but he did build affordable housing that is responsive to its local context and all kinds of people like living in.
In the last 50 years the white population has also declined in percentage terms. Is that less “shocking”?
Basically the city has for decades become more Asian and Hispanic, and less white and black. In other words the city has become more diverse. I am not sure why you think that matters.
As I said to Karl earlier, it is better to leave race out of the discussion.
Bill, look up “white flight”. White people voluntarily leaving their neighborhoods to avoid new neighbors of color (they have mainly avoided what they deem as having too many asian or hispanic neighbors in this century in CA) is different than policies that intentionally price and push out the black middle class in sf.
Karl, I agree that Calvin Welch’s influence over the decades has been bad for housing affordability. But you dilute that argument by making the issue about race. There is no “correct” number of any one race in any neighborhood of the city. Demographic changes over time are inevitable.
I didn’t like it when that Marina crowd were criticized for being “too white” either. Nor do I think that a meeting in the Castro is “too gay” or a meeting in Bayview is “too black”. Let’s just keep identity politics out of it.
Dumbest shit I’ve read all day.
The longshoremen’s union built St. Francis Square Cooperative. Affordable decent housing can be built, you just need an entity with money to invest and a non predatory agenda.
a roomful of old people nonplussed at the idea of a housing development bearing no small resemblance to the stern of a Princess Cruise ship — old people L❤️VE cruises, yet they oppose the Safeway hi-rise. Seriously, great article!
There are a glut of San Francisco BMRs available for purchase. I wonder if people know about these…many of the income limits have been increased to stimulate sales. Many do not require the “lottery”, all that’s needed is to meet the income requirements and the ability to qualify for a loan.
You don’t really own a BMR, so why waste your time with buying one? You will probably even lose money when you want to sell.
Interesting article on the costs of unfunded inclusionary zoning: https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/should-we-bribe-the-nimbys
Call it what it really is… Parasite zoning.
In their comments above, D3 states, “there are empty units everywhere.” In my experience this is true, a factor that must have a significant impact on housing affordability. Yet, in numerous reports and studies about housing in San Francisco, I have rarely heard mention of empty units as a factor in the housing affordability crisis. My experience is anecdotal; I wonder if there is data to support this observation.
I don’t imagine I’m the only San Franciscan who would love to see Joe Eskenazi and the capable Mission Local journalists address how the growing number of empty units affects the housing crisis.
This is true, but adds yet more complexity. How do we define “empty?”
Is it unoccupied, but for only part of the year? Is it a rental property allowed to lie fallow, or is it listed on rental sites? Is it a dwelling allowed to deteriorate so that neighbors beg for demolition? Is it being used as an Airbnb? If it’s a 4+ unit building, have business taxes been paid? Is it an SRO of over six units, with Health Department inspections?
Many, including city staff and officials, will cite the numbers they like best to suit the narrative they have in mind.
Thank you Joe got a well researched and reasoned article
Nit mentioned is the change in available apartments when Air B&B came along. Landlords converted housing for residents into short-term rentals and that was a beginning factor in the shortage of rental housing. Maybe some regulations were made after a few years that helped contain the epidemic of short-term renting, but it’s still in the equation of why SF has an affordable housing problem.
Rose, the widespread adoption of Airbnb by SF property owners is easily explained. Rent control only covers leases of more than 30 days. That naturally drives owners of units to instead run their units as short-term lets, using Airbnb and other platforms.
It is not that it is necessarily more profitable. And it is certainly more work. But it does retain that all-important control over their units that rent control takes away.
You cannot criticize owners using Airbnb without criticizing rent control.
There are many places without rent control that have criticized AirBNB for taking rental properties off the market including Lake Tahoe.
1) while family upzoning might only yield ~14k units, there are significant (tho likely not enough) units in the pipeline between potential stonestown, park Merced, candlestick, Schlage/baylands and other potential developments
2) rents are more affordable in Oakland. Perhaps part of affordability is stabilizing crime and local govt there
The article overlooks several critical points. The first is that in the past 30 years the city built enough office space for 200,000 workers while building only enough housing for 100,000 workers. Of course rents skyrocketed. This was completely predictable.
People believe that progressives run San Francisco. They don’t and never have. Wealthy developer money runs San Francisco. The developers could have easily built more housing instead of office space, but it was more profitable to build office space. That office boom has now gone bust because unrestrained capitalism goes into boom/bust cycles.
Only now that the office space boom has gone bust have the developers decided that it’s time to build housing. Due to their poor planning decisions, the open space South of Market is largely gone so they have now decided to bulldoze residential areas. A funny thing happens when you announce you are going to radically change someone’s neighborhood. They push back.
Let’s put the blame where it really belongs, on the wealthy developers that now want to blame the residents for the problems that they themselves caused.
“in the past 30 years the city built enough office space for 200,000 workers while building only enough housing for 100,000 workers. Of course rents skyrocketed.”
That is not a problem because many of the new workers in those offices will live outside the City and commute.
We do need more housing in the city, but the YIMBY solution will fail badly for several reasons. The current proposal encourages building of larger residential buildings by demolishing smaller residential buildings largely in The Richmond and Sunset. Think about that for a moment. There may be more housing ten years from now, but it will result in less housing until then, a lot less housing. It’s an insane solution.
Problem #2. San Francisco is allegedly a transit first city, but the city has built just one new subway line and four stations in the last 50 years. It is a 45 minute commute from the western areas of the city to downtown. It takes much longer to get anywhere else. The new rules strongly discourage new parking in the buildings. Street parking is already tight. How willing are people to live in those new buildings if parking is near impossible and the transit options are terrible?
Let me give an example. There is a proposal to build 520 apartments on the site of the Ocean Beach Safeway with just 260 parking spaces. It is a one hour bus commute to downtown. Street parking in that neighborhood is already difficult. The average residence in the Richmond and Sunset has 1.4 cars. It’s not because we love cars. It’s because living here without one is very difficult.
Wiener is responsible !!!
Hard to believe that you wrote two articles explaining that the big problem for those complaining about this and other such projects which are legal because of state laws driven by one guy that you did not mention that the guy who did this thorough shaft job on San Francisco is Scott Wiener.
Why’d you leave that out, Joe ?
It might have changed a vote or two.
Or, a few thousand.
go Niners !!
h.
I encourage you to check out the “Who is SF building for” report from People Power Media and the Race & Equity in All Planning Coalition. It is a bit disappointing to not see any affordable housing advocates get any space in your column, especially when there’s existing research. Especially when I’m fairly certain you know about both PPM and the REP Coalition already.
Agreed, the affordability problem is very complicated, and it may be too late to unravel the global view by investors that housing must be as profitable as possible.
The conclusion here, that building more won’t really help San Francisco itself become more affordable, is on target. We need planners and leaders, rather than investors, with real vision for aligning jobs and transportation more widely. The Bay Area used to work well, with dedicated rail (the dismantled Key System) and plenty of industry (C&H Sugar, for one).
It turns out that old-fashioned city planning works, and doesn’t require putting elders on ice floes at age 50.
“Old-fashioned city planning” means “rife with corruption.” Is new city planning corruption-free?
Anything can be corrupted, especially when profits are involved.
All this is happening to the backdrop of stalled projects at Stonestown, Treasure Island, Divis car wash, Lucky 13, a couple of towers at Market/Van Ness. Just of the top of my head, there’s more. That’s permitted and entitled and ready to go housing construction that should be yielding tens of thousands of homes. (One abandoned hole in the ground if you’re feeling pedantic). And yeah, that abomination in the Marina is going to get built and you got to think it’s like we’re cutting off our nose to spite our face.
If you want to get as much housing as possible to be actually built then you need to not just streamline planning approval, but also completely remove (not just incrementally reduce as we are currently doing) unfunded inclusionary housing mandates and the whole spectrum of impact fees and onerous transfer taxes that are specifically imposed on housing creation.
This entire ill-conceived approach, beginning in the wake of Prop 13 in the 70’s, has acted as a counterproductive drag on the creation of much-needed housing and has reached an untenable level.
All of these costs, if a community wants what they fund, should be broadly borne through taxes on that community; it should not be borne exclusively by new residents. To do so is both unfair and a drag on the longterm health of a locality, state and nation.
Let me get this straight, what you’re saying is that residents of a neighborhood should be taxed, heavily so, for the privilege of seeing housing added while getting squeezed out of services like schools, public transportation etc., because there are no impact fees to at least marginally improve those services. You’re proposing Fillmore 2.0, because people won;’t be able to hyper-increase their incomes to cover that neo-liberal blank check of yours. It’s not rocket science what that community would want, or rather, vehemently oppose, and that’s new housing on terms like that.
Besides, there is no need to build as much housing as possible. Executing the existing pipeline would suffice. Little of the grievances you field actually play a role in holding things up right now, it is interest rates and ballooning construction costs.
SFUSD is underenrolled and closing schools. Transit ridership is down from pre-pandemic, and unlike driving, more riders mean better service. People who move into new homes already pay much more tax than average thanks to Prop 13.
Parents have increasingly been leaving SFUSD for private schools, b/c dysfunction. Muni for rideshares, robotaxis and eBike commuting. SFUSD and Muni are not coming back when you’re squeezing them even further, Ronald Reagan style.
Daniel,
In the spirit of compromise, I’ll meet you half way.
How about eliminating the unfunded inclusionary housing mandates, development impact fees, and absurd transfer taxes on all of those “pipeline” housing projects that are stalled out on account of these mandates, fees and taxes?
That would be a good start to get things rolling.
P.S. And, no, the existing residents would not be “tax heavily” — as they would not have to pay anymore taxes that the new residents. Why do you not consider this fair?
I have zero sympathy for old home owners who gained extreme wealth and pay no property taxes.
They could directly make housing cheaper by selling at below market but not a single one will.
No sympathy for millionaires – whether they’re coders or rich older homeowners.
If you’re against means testing rent controlled units then don’t ask why supply and demand keep prices sky high for #1…land
Thank you for setting the record straight and for defending me an “old” person who attended the meeting at Fort Mason regarding the proposed (non affordable) Safeway Development at the Marina Safeway site. You “schooled” us about the economics and also called out the past corruptive practices at City Hall that have hampered building affordable and unaffordable housing in SF! BUT I plead with you to put your exemplary investigative skills to unearth why the Planning Director who has digression to require CEQUA review of the Marina Safeway site has so far demurred! As a subscriber to Mission Local I applaud your great journalism at a time when it is needed now more than ever! And thanks too for including my “hood” !
D2 voted for real estate shills Scott Wiener, Ed Lee London Breed, Daniel Lurie and Stephen Sherrill and now they are getting exactly what they voted for–real estate deregulation.
Meanwhile, in the Mission, we never voted for any of this and ended up as the first upzoned 20 yr ago. No individual project will impact housing prices. But the Safeway project is a hard object lesson for D2 that might cause them to rethink their past ways and make the Mission whole.
The “planning official” overlooked the role of attorneys who often insert themselves into the permitting process, adding complexity and cost. With billing rates that can exceed $650 per hour, critics argue that the financial incentives can favor prolonged proceedings and increasingly intricate regulatory requirements. Under the banner of ensuring compliance and public participation, the process can become layered with repeated rounds of stakeholder review and negotiation, driving up costs and extending timelines. At the same time, these attorneys frequently focus their efforts on gaining the support of, courting and supporting careers of planning staff and senior managers—unelected bureaucrats who administer the regulations but are not directly accountable to the public—thereby reinforcing an increasingly complex regulatory system.
Thank you for that well sighted view of the SF onion! With music no less!
We have been sold bills of goods by affordable and for profit housing lobbyists over the past few decades.
Neither of their models can come close to scaling. But their incessant comms spending, in the case of nonprofits spending public dollars to propagandize us, has warped our perceptions of housing. Failures of this model are solely responsible for decimating progressive politics in San Francisco. How many more “housing for all” measures will they put forth that don’t produce housing but for a tiny few before people get wise?
There is no path under current systemic and structural immutables for San Francisco to take any steps that can scale to make housing more affordable.
It. Ain’t Gonna. Happen.
But the housing lobbyists are itching to get rich trying. They all share an unvarnished contempt for San Francisco residents and should be shunned.
Given the myriad disasters related to housing at all levels, the Millennium Tower, substance/psych treatment next to Marshall Elementary school full of at risk youth to the repeated debacles at the SFHA, throwing more scarce resources into this sieve of corruption only digs us in deeper.
It is time for disinterested residents, and no, SF homeowners have no operative fiduciary interest in suppressing housing production, to set the governance, allocations and policy agenda, and for private corporations, nonprofit and for-profit, to compete to implement those bottom up policies developed in the general public, not particular private interest.
When those who receive city grants and contracts are at the policymaking table that determines what grants and contracts will be let, then that is a prime specimen of public sector corruption.
There is no way that Wiener’s developer corporate welfare laws that exclude the constitutionally specified sovereigns from any role in self government above and beyond voting will ever be repealed in San Francisco. Prop 33 to allow localities statewide to implement rent control failed in San Francisco with 57% of the vote. The legal climate is as hostile as the political climate given that the nonprofits sandbagged independent progressive politics in exchange for guaranteed public funding. For the time being.
We have been played by all involved. It is time for a general purpose backlash.
Hilarious that the author obliquely references the “Who killed Hannibal” meme, then without irony asks a “former longtime Planning Department official” what the cause of the housing crisis is. Old white people attending planning meetings is a well-researched and documented contributor to the housing crisis, it’s not just a “maybe” as the author contends. There is one underappreciated cause of the housing crisis not listed here: years of journalistic malpractice leading to a misinformed electorate and misguided housing policy. This article does little to rectify that.
Sir or madam –
I don’t know that meme, so you start out in the wrong place and keep losing ground from there.
Best,
JE
To what extent was the downzoning of the 70s informed and shaped by urban renewal from the 50s and 60s?
It seems like there’s a history of this kind of miscalculated citywide makeover paired with an equally shortsighted overreaction to it.
Excellent analysis Joe. Spot on and to the point(s). You are one of, if not, the best in the business. Thanks for bringing light to issues of importance that we all face every day in this very special place on Earth. Your perspective is always appreciated. San Francisco has been a NIMBY town since before the great 1906 earthquake and fire – neighbors shrieked when the plan to move earthquake shacks from closing camps to their precious NIMBY patch of neighborhood was and remains very San Francisco. History moved on but times have not changed much. There is just something about this City…
When rents were already skyrocketing many years ago, affordable apartments remained at 15% of new construction instead of the 50% that was needed.
Who killed housing affordability? It’s not a complicated question at all.
NIMBYs shoot down most projects. SF doesn’t build new housing. Then we elected a real DA and a mayor who is less tolerant of crime, just as the AI industry is taking off, bringing young highly paid people to the city.
SF is again a very desirable place to live but we refuse to build more housing. It’s that simple.
Sir or madam —
Sounds like you solved it. Jeez, I could’ve just written that. What a genius you are.
Best,
JE
First of all, there is nothing “moderate” about our corporate real estate drones!
They are extreme!
It is amazing to me that, in a tourist city, aesthetics (which attract visitors) and neighborhood character (something our neighborhoods have largely lost, compared to, say, 50 years ago, are not considered.
Instead, someone called Karl, above, says “build, build, build.”
But only truly affordable housing should be built (but it won’t, for the reasons outlined in Mr. Eskenazi’s cogent column). We have squandered the space needed for such housing to build horrendously tasteless high rises with premium rents.
Things are going to be very dysfunctional 20 years from now when all of those currently semi-reasonable apartments and flats (kept there by rent control) will have become vacant, and the rents will have gone up to current absurd levels!
Nothing will be done to prevent this.
The leadership believes that laser displays, tacky LED lights everywhere and horrendous EDM “concerts” will “bring the city back.”
It was not gone in the first place, but all of this will be counterproductive.
Especially with such steep hotel taxes and a sales tax that may be close to 10%. And absurd entry fees for museums, not to mention the new cable car fare!
“Things are going to be very dysfunctional 20 years from now when all of those currently semi-reasonable apartments and flats (kept there by rent control) will have become vacant, and the rents will have gone up to current absurd levels!”
Harry, I respectfully think that you have that 100% wrong. What will save SF housing affordability, if anything can, is that the Boomers currently hogging all the under-market rent-controlled housing will die off or move into care homes.
This will free up tens of thousands of housing units which will meet the demand from the hordes of people who move to SF, these days mostly for top jobs rather than because they never want to grow up.
Rent control drives up rents at the margin.
“Hogging????” “Die off???”
Personally, I’m planning to live forever in the house we put our hearts, souls, sweat, and money into, just to keep disrespectful, unempathetic punks from getting your paws on it. “Time’s up, Boomer!” Never, I tell you!
Not complicated indeed: There are tens of thousands of future homes permitted and entitled right here in San Francisco, good to get built, starting right now. The projects have all the considerations around the YIMBY/NIMBY chasm, Affordable quotas, CEQA, fees and taxes and what haveyou way behind them.
Really everyone needs to travel more and see how others live . There’s only like 20-30 World Class cities in the world .. you could debate that S.F. is very affordable for a GLOBAL City . SF is first class . Financial Samurai has a good read “The Cheapest International City “
Hard to reconcile that claim with the fact that housing in Tokyo costs only 30-50% as much as SF.
Ricardo and Dan, a few years ago The Economist magazine ran in depth study of those world class cities, looking specifically at housing costs and the factors that might correlate to those costs.
It found that easily the number one factor that correlated to expensive housing was having aggressive land use regulations. The more a local jurisdiction controls what can be build, where, and how much it is taxed, the higher the rents and costs to buy.
It is probably therefore not a coincidence that the cheapest places to live in the US are places like Houston, with minimal land use and planning restrictions. Whilst the two US cities with the most aggressive forms of rent control – NY and SF – have the highest rents.