Bizarro proposal would hinder construction
San Francisco Supervisors Connie Chan and Aaron Peskin are in the process of trying to place a new housing measure on this November’s ballot. At a glance, the initiative, called the Affordable Housing Production Act, looks and sounds pro-housing. It purports to streamline the approvals process for affordable, mixed-income and educator housing.
But don’t be fooled; the measure is NIMBYism masquerading as progress.
In an only-in-San-Francisco twist, the primary purpose of the initiative appears to be confusing voters into undermining a genuinely pro-housing measure supported by Mayor London Breed — Affordable Homes Now — also headed onto the November ballot.
The vast majority of San Franciscans want to make it easier to build new affordable homes. According to a recent poll conducted by EMC Research, over 65% of people support expediting the approval of affordable housing.
And yet Chan and Peskin’s measure will do nothing to remove the roadblocks that make building affordable housing difficult. Instead, it will place unrealistic constraints and requirements that make it nearly impossible to build anything. It also does nothing to hold the city accountable for establishing reasonable time frames for approving affordable and mixed-income projects.
Affordable Homes Now, however, will do all of these things. Here’s how.
Too many projects in San Francisco get sidelined because the city’s rigorous approval processes require going through multiple superfluous committees that allow anyone with an objection, no matter how small, to be heard. Affordable Homes Now expedites approvals for three different types of affordable housing projects: developments where all the homes are affordable to low-income households, housing for teachers and educators, and mixed-income projects that contain more homes affordable to low-income San Franciscans than city regulations require.
Any project that wants to comply with this fast-tracking must be fully compliant with all codes and not demolish existing housing. Developers on these projects are required to pay all construction workers middleclass wages, provide them with health care and create apprenticeship opportunities to create pathways for more San Franciscans into middle-class construction jobs. As union contracts already meet these standards, Affordable Homes Now encourages using union labor.
And yet faced with overwhelming voter support for streamlined affordable housing and a plan that would give it to them, Supervisors Chan and Peskin appear to be deliberately trying to confuse voters by launching a bizarro version of the bill with the hopes of tanking its fortunes.
Under their bill, developers who want to streamline their development process would be required to designate 37% of their homes for lower-income households. Sure, we’d all like that much affordable housing in each project. But it doesn’t pencil out financially. According to San Francisco’s Housing Affordability Strategies study, it is challenging for most housing projects to be built even under the city’s current affordable housing requirement of 21.5% for large developments because the high cost of development in San Francisco often exceeds the value of the project. The Chan/Peskin proposal’s unreasonably high mandate would functionally prevent mixed-income housing projects from moving forward.
The measure further requires developers to use “skilled and trained” labor — graduates of state-certified apprenticeship programs. But this group only constitutes one-seventh of California’s construction trades workforce, which is too few to build the housing we need.
Chan and Peskin have a long anti-housing track record. Both infamously voted against turning a Nordstrom’s valet parking lot into 495 new homes (118 of which would be affordable to low-income San Franciscans). They also opposed building 316 new naturally affordable homes at 450 O’Farrell St. in the empty space above a church.
These decisions were so egregious that California housing officials are currently investigating whether they violated state law.
Affordable Homes Now, on the other hand, establishes evidence-based yet ambitious affordability requirements. It has enforcement mechanisms to ensure developers meet new wage, health care and training standards. It sets clear timelines to speed up the process for building affordable, mixedincome and teacher housing. It also protects renters by excluding projects that require the demolition of existing homes.
It’s hard to see why any supervisor who actually cares about San Francisco’s housing shortage, displacement and affordability crisis would want to sabotage this bill’s success. And yet that’s exactly what the Chan/Peskin plan aspires to do. Supervisors who are serious about solutions to our city’s most pressing problem should reject this disingenuous attempt to deceive voters.