Seeking to streamline affordable housing
As San Francisco’s housingaffordability crisis threatens to exile all but the most affluent, officials and advocates are straining to find ways to create more affordable housing.
Beyond the outsize construction costs in San Francisco, the city’s dazzlingly complex zoning laws and extremely slow approvals are routinely blamed for saddling developers with even more expenses and delays.
That’s where Proposition E comes in. Signed onto the ballot by four members of the Board of Supervisors — Sandra Lee Fewer, Matt Haney, Shamann Walton and Aaron Peskin — the November measure seeks to chip away at the barriers to building 100% affordable housing and homes reserved for teachers and
other school employees. The result, supporters hope, will be more affordable homes delivered faster and cheaper.
The slew of city and state officials who support Prop. E hope to wed the measure to the $600 million affordable housing bond also on the November ballot.
Many San Francisco teachers can’t afford to live in the city where they teach, forcing long commutes or high teacher turnover, said Anabel Ibanez, political director for United Educators of San Francisco, the union representing San Francisco Unified’s teachers and paraprofessionals, which has endorsed the measure. The definition of “educator housing” also extends to teachers and staff at City College of San Francisco.
“When classroom teachers live in the communities in which they practice their profession, it promotes stability, community investment and creates stronger ties between families, educators and students,” she said.
The district loses 300 to 700 teachers a year — due in part to housing costs as well as other factors — Ibanez said.
Prop. E seeks to speed up housing by eliminating a host of hoops that developers often have to jump through.
If a project lot is at least 10,000 square feet and already zoned for residential use, Prop. E would strip away the requirement to obtain conditionaluse permits, planning commission approvals and meet certain design standards, hurdles many projects now face. Buildings would still need to meet requirements around fire safety and disability access.
“We’re creating a new chessboard citywide for the opportunity to build educator and affordable housing,” said Peter Cohen, codirector of Council of Community Housing Organizations, who helped write the measure.
By adding more flexibility in the zoning laws for affordable housing, Cohen said, “you shortcut having to go through the bureaucratic crap to get into the guts of the process itself.” He estimated that Prop. E could shave 12 to 18 months off the planning process for affordable housing, which on average takes five years.
The measure would also create new opportunities to build affordable and educator housing where such development was previously prohibited. If passed — Prop. E requires a simplemajority threshold to succeed — the measure would permit housing on any parcel owned by the city, state or federal government, though all public parks would remain offlimits. That provision provides no mandate that housing be built on those public parcels, but it removes a legal barrier to building that’s currently in place. Educator housing can only be built on land owned by SFUSD or City College.
Prop. E also seeks to accelerate the review process for 100% affordable and teacher housing: City staffers would have up to 90 days to review projects of up to 150 units and 180 days for larger projects.
The measure was borne out of political strife. Mayor London Breed initially introduced her own similar proposal, but agreed to compromise if the supervisors would add two provisions unique to her measure. One would allow for taller buildings, and the other would permit more flexibility around unit size. The board is expected to pass trailing legislation approving those changes if the measure passes. The legislation has been introduced but is awaiting a hearing before the Planning Commission, according to a legislative aide from Fewer’s office. The mayor has agreed to support Prop. E on the condition that the legislation passes.
For all the potential that Prop. E’s supporters say the measure has, data about its potential impact remain scarce: Neither the mayor’s office nor the measure’s sponsors, nor Cohen nor the Planning Department could provide an accurate estimate for how many developable parcels might be made available for housing.
Prop. E is formally opposed by the Libertarian Party of San Francisco, which argued the city should focus attention and resources on making private development easier and cheaper to build, rather than housing subsidized by the government. The group also reiterated a deep distrust in the government’s ability to manage an expanded affordablehousing development program.