San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Redistricting mess is S.F.’s own making
Housing policies shift growth, forcing changes in boundaries
San Francisco’s Redistricting Task Force is hard at work drawing new supervisorial district boundaries by Friday’s legal deadline. As a result of this process, some neighborhoods could change districts, meaning their residents would be represented by a different supervisor. Some districts could also grow, shrink or shift so that each supervisor represents the same amount of people, as counted in the 2020 Census.
When the initial maps came out of this process in March, some people cried foul at the proposed changes to district boundaries. Opponents of these changes have accused task force members of overruling local concerns and capriciously splitting up neighborhoods that shared the same district representation. That the Elections Commission even considered the unprecedented removal of appointees to the task force in response to heavy pressure from some dissatisfied organizations speaks to the level of angst.
But the task force is doing what is required by law: drawing 11 supervisor districts that have population within 5% of the statistical average as required by the City Charter, protect the voting strength of racial and language minorities under the federal Voting Rights Act, avoid race as the predominant factor in drawing district lines under the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment equal protection clause and consider communities of interest, like LGBTQ populations as stipulated by City Charter.
Shifting districts around may cause angst, but it is necessary due to the large disparities in population in the districts today. When they were drawn in 2012, the districts had roughly equal population. But in the past 15 years, about 85% of new housing was concentrated in eastern neighborhoods such as South of Market, Mission Bay, Dogpatch and Bayview-Hunters Point.
And people moved into that housing. One eastern district, District Six, now has a whopping 30% higher population than the statistical average.
As these eastern neighborhoods grew, western neighborhoods barely added population. This has precipitated the chain reaction requiring neighborhoods to change districts.
Why did so much population growth occur on the east side, unbalancing district populations? Because five decades of housing policy have channeled population growth away from western neighborhoods and toward the eastern ones.
In the 1960s-70s, city leaders changed zoning rules to restrict the construction of more homes in western neighborhoods like the Marina, West Portal and Parkside. To meet projected population growth, while still preserving these restrictions, San Francisco enacted a series of so-called “area plans” — like the 2009 Eastern Neighborhoods Plans and the 2018 Central SoMa Plan. The area plans that account for most housing growth are concentrated in the eastern neighborhoods, from the Hunters Point in the south, through the Market-Octavia area in the center and Treasure Island in the north. To date, there has been no area plan with a significant housing portion for western neighborhoods like St. Francis Wood, the Richmond or Sunset, all of which have had stagnate populations.
The resulting skew necessitates a shifting of district boundaries from east to west.
On the west side, Districts One (Richmond), Four (Sunset) and Seven (Lake Merced-Twin Peaks) must increase population, expanding eastward. On the east side, Districts Six (Tenderloin-Mission Bay-Treasure Island) and 10 (Dogpatch-Sunnydale) must lose population and shrink. Other districts’ boundaries are caught up in a push from the west and a pull from the east.
For example: suppose District Four has lost population since 2012, and needed to expand east into District 7’s Inner Sunset to add more constituents. To then balance its own population, District Seven might expand across Twin Peaks into District Eight. Then, District Eight might be forced to expand east across Valencia Street and the Mission corridor to District Nine. And so on and so on.
The redistricting process shows the competing pressures between neighborhood desires and following a citywide principle of “one person, one vote.” Even districts that currently meet population targets are affected by border changes. For instance, District Five Supervisor Dean Preston complained that, while his district’s population was close to the target, draft maps would remove neighborhoods from (and add new ones to) his district. He’s not wrong. But changes outside the district are responsible for pushing District Five east.
Districts One, Four and Seven on the west side are required to grow their populations east, possibly expanding to the Inner Sunset, Cole Valley or even the Panhandle. District Two, meanwhile, may have to expand south into District Five to replace population lost to expanding Districts One and Three. To the south in District Eight, advocates want to keep Corona Heights and Duboce Park with the Castro to unite LGBTQ communities of interest.
Preserving the current boundaries of District Five would cause more drastic changes to other districts. These are tough calls where the answers are not easy.
The Redistricting Task Force will deliberate and take public feedback until final maps are submitted by Friday. San Francisco residents should know that supervisorial district boundaries will change to give everyone equal representation.
If residents want the redistricting process to go more smoothly next time in 2032, we need to make different choices — specifically surrounding housing — that will reduce the need for neighborhoods to change their representation. If districts on the west side add housing in equal amounts as their eastern counterparts, then districts will not need to change their boundaries in order to meet population targets.
San Francisco’s work-in-progress plan on where and how to add homes — otherwise known as a “housing element” — could be the vehicle to do so and has some promising proposals that would expand the population capacity of western neighborhoods. Furthermore, state mandates require the city to build more affordable housing in high-resource neighborhoods on the west side.
In order to stabilize neighborhood representation in local government, all neighborhoods must be open to some growth.
Mike Chen serves on the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency's Citizens' Advisory Council. He is a board member of Alice B. Toklas LGBTQ Democratic Club, and the GLBTQ+ Asian Pacific Alliance (GAPA), which has advocated in the redistricting process. He is also a volunteer organizer with SF YIMBY.
Why does Los Angeles trust Sacramento and Washington more than it trusts itself ?
Angelenos may complain about state and national government like other Californians, but we also treat Sacramento and D.C. as training grounds for our local politicians. Only after they’ve proven themselves in the state Legislature or Congress do we elevate them to higher office.
The habit is holding this year. In the city of Los Angeles election, polls show former Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, now a member of Congress, leading the mayor’s race in June. City Council Member Kevin De León, better known for his leadership of the state Senate, is poised to capture the second spot in the November run-off.
In Los Angeles County races, former Assembly Speaker and current state Sen. Bob Hertzberg and state Sen. Henry Stern are seeking a seat on a Board of Supervisors that now includes Sheila Kuehl and Holly Mitchell (both former Assembly members and state senators), Janice Hahn (a former member of Congress) and Hilda Solis (who served in the Legislature, Congress and the Obama cabinet).
Yes, transitions from state to local office happen in other California places because of the games of political musical chairs term limits produce. Assembly Speaker Willie Brown became San Francisco’s mayor, and former state Senate leader Darrell Steinberg is now the mayor of Sacramento.
But most of the time, California’s ambitious politicians work their way up from the local to state level, as in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s rise from the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to mayor to statewide office. Indeed, the past four San Francisco mayors came to the job from other local offices.
What makes Los Angeles different?
Our peculiar mix of ego and insecurity.
We see ourselves as a city of stars, drawn from across the universe to L.A.’s sunshine and spotlight. We see excellence as an import, and so we honor foreign film directors at the Oscars, and celebrate the Lakers picking up LeBron James or the
Los Angeles locals don’t trust our ability to produce greatness in our local communities.
Dodgers signing a star free-agent first baseman.
This dynamic can be maddening for locals. It’s why, in the film “La La Land,” Ryan Gosling’s character, an underappreciated jazz musician, complains of his fellow Angelenos, “They worship everything, and they value nothing.”
The even darker side of this devotion to global stars is that it reveals a profound insecurity about ourselves. Los Angeles locals don’t trust our ability to produce greatness in our local communities.
Unfortunately, self-pessimism makes a certain sense, when you consider the poor quality of our schools and our lack of economic mobility. Given the high cost of living, this is no longer the place to come to make your fortune; moving to Los Angeles, and to much of California, has become a luxury, possible mostly for those who have already made it elsewhere.
L.A.’s weak political scene doesn’t inspire confidence, either. It’s true that the departing mayor, Eric Garcetti, came up through the City Council (though he built his image on elite educational credentials acquired elsewhere, like his Rhodes scholarship). But today he is so unpopular that he’s trying to leave office early (to become ambassador to India). The most local of the mayoral candidates, council member and former Los Angeles police Officer Joe Buscaino, is a heavy underdog. (Angelenos seem to have forgotten that the city’s late, great Mayor Tom Bradley was also a cop-turned-council member.)
In this year’s race, Bass seems to be the favorite in part because of the status she gained elsewhere — as a consensus-building Assembly speaker in Sacramento and as a member of Congress influential enough to make President Biden’s short list for vice president. De León’s case for leadership is similarly grounded not in his recent work on the City Council, but in historic labor, environmental and pro-immigrant legislation he got passed in Sacramento.
But does this Angeleno bias for electing state legislative leaders (Antonio Villaraigosa was also Assembly speaker before becoming mayor) still make sense? Because, right now, L.A.’s biggest public need isn’t for legislative dealmakers but for excellent public administrators, who can re-engineer outdated departments and make faltering homelessness programs work better.
Unfortunately, the mayor’s race doesn’t seem to have such an administrator. The developer Rick Caruso, who has a high-profile and selffunded mayoral campaign, is pitching himself as a managerial expert who can clean things up. But the reality is that developers are mostly promoters and dealmakers rather than tough administrators. And so for all Caruso’s savvy, his skill set is closer to that of his ex-legislator opponents than his ubiquitous ads might lead you to believe.
Worse still, Caruso’s pitch to voters centers around his popular Southern California shopping and entertainment developments, like the Grove, next to the Original Farmers Market, and the Americana, in Glendale. That’s a mistake, since such local successes seem unlikely to impress Angelenos.
After all, what has he ever done in Sacramento and Washington?