Who’s better on housing, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie or (socialist) New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani?
That’s the question that Laura Foote, executive director of YIMBY Action, and Ryder Kessler, co-founder of Abundance New York, set out to answer in an hour-long discussion on Substack Live this morning moderated by writer Scott Alan Lucas.
There was a clear answer: Kessler in New York gave his mayor an A-, and Foote in San Francisco said hers was only deserving of a B-, or maybe even a C+.
“He’s holding back,” Foote said.
To be fair, she said, the city has made some good pro-housing moves under Lurie: He helped pass San Francisco’s first major upzoning in the city’s west and north in decades, and also recently helped lower the rate of affordable units required in new housing projects from 15 percent to 5 percent.
But, she said, the city is still fighting the YIMBYs. “I’m now on my second lawsuit against the city of San Francisco,” Foote said.
One of those lawsuits was against last year’s upzoning plan to allow taller buildings, which YIMBY Action felt did not go far enough — the organization accused San Francisco of violating the state law that had required it to upzone in the first place by not increasing heights as much as it should have.
The second lawsuit, filed this month, was similar: It alleged the city was not in compliance with SB 79, a state law requiring that apartment buildings be allowed near public transit.
On top of that, Lurie has also opposed the Marina Safeway project, a proposed 22-story development on the waterfront in a wealthy neighborhood.
“I think that we have a catastrophe on our hands and need to have solutions at scale with that,” Foote said, adding that she would prefer a maximalist approach.
“I wanted him to be the YIMBY hero,” she said. But instead, she said, “It’s been a couple years of slowly festering irritation.”
Charles Lutvak, Lurie’s spokesperson, defended Lurie’s approach. “Mayor Lurie passed the city’s first major rezoning since we downzoned half a century ago and partnered with Supervisor Melgar on a transformational investment in affordable housing that will be on the ballot this fall,” he said. “We have more work to do to turn reforms into homes, but our administration has consistently taken real action to build new homes so families can live and thrive in San Francisco.”
In New York City, though, YIMBYs have reported the opposite experience: Though he’s only been in office for seven months, Mamdani has vastly exceeded their expectations.
“He is doing so many things that are from our wish list and from our agenda,” Kessler said. He pointed to environmental reform efforts that were pushed through the state legislature with support from Mamdani this spring.
Plus, Mamdani has put YIMBYs on his housing team and his housing plan didn’t just call for 200,000 units of affordable housing, it also called for hundreds of thousands of market-rate ones.
Kessler said he has “angst” about the fact that Mamdani has “frozen the rent,” something that many YIMBYs believe will push up prices for non-rent-controlled units. But, Kessler said, “the fact that he’s delivering very legible wins gives him political capital and space to pursue the medium and longer term things,” policies that have so far been closely aligned with what YIMBYs want.
Kessler pointed out that, unlike in California, where new state laws have defanged neighborhood opposition to housing, few YIMBY reforms have happened at the state level in New York.
But, he said, the biggest sea change was having “a mayor, especially a socialist” like Mamdani acknowledge that the biggest issue he had changed his mind on was “the role of market-rate housing development.” Mamdani, he added, has been key in “redirecting the organized left towards YIMBYism.”
That’s something that has not happened in San Francisco — at least not yet. Most progressives in the city are so skeptical of market-rate housing, it is a de facto litmus test for progressive bona fides. They typically only support housing projects that are subsidized for middle- and low-income households.
Foote attributed this to the fact that progressive coalition in San Francisco has been closely allied with neighborhood groups who value community input — even if that input is NIMBY opposition to new housing development, she said.
“There is a disrupter energy in the progressive party, but it’s been married in San Francisco to a thoughtful, careful, tap-the-brakes community thing,” Foote said.
YIMBYism here has instead been embraced by politicians that are a part of the moderate coalition in San Francisco, such as state Sen. Scott Wiener. Though that could change: Ex-staffers of leftist Saikat Chakrabarti, who unsuccessfully ran to replace Nancy Pelosi, have spun up a new club they describe as “a progressive YIMBY club.”
Foote said the YIMBY-moderate alliance in San Francisco is not necessarily a natural fit: The pro-cop, pro-business downtown politicos have not always been pro-housing, which may explain why Lurie has not fully embraced YIMBYism, she said.
“Turns out rich guys are not as comfortable with disruption,” she added.
She hopes that at some point, the perception of YIMBYism as a moderate-leaning ideology will break down and YIMBYism will be embraced across the political spectrum in San Francisco.
It appears to be working in New York. “I think our organization has been part of this as really beating the drum that this is a cross-cutting axis, not a point on the spectrum,” Kessler said. “Our community can have DSA members and Manhattan Institute fellows all alongside each other.”
