NEWSOM TARGETS HIS HOMETOWN ON HOUSING
On Oct. 26, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted 8-3 to reject a 495-unit housing project that had survived the city’s notorious regulatory gauntlet and won strong support from Mayor London Breed and a coalition of progressive and moderate groups. The response may prove a turning point in California history. The state Department of Housing and Community Development immediately said the vote against a project with more than 20 percent affordable units in an area with good transit access appeared to violate two state laws meant to clear obstacles to new housing. Now Gov. Gavin Newsom has agreed and essentially declared war on the city’s — and many other local governments’ — housing complacency and indifference.
On Tuesday, the housing agency launched its first-ever formal investigation into why it takes San Francisco longer than anywhere else in California to approve and complete projects. Its intent is to set up a practical framework that ensures that projects that check certain boxes have clear paths to completion — addressing the “shifting goalposts” phenomenon of developers addressing a series of obstacles only to realize there will always be new ones.
This certainty is crucial. The housing shortage of nearly 1 million units has led to the state becoming the epicenter of U.S. poverty and to it losing population for two straight years. Far-reaching fallout seems inevitable. Tech workers who make $200,000plus may do fine. But if what once seemed comfortably middle-income families are hammered by $1 million home price tags and $4,000 rents, who will serve in law enforcement? Teach or provide daycare? Work in restaurants and service industries? California’s charms do not provide unlimited protection against people leaving for less pricey states in which homeownership does not feel like a distant prospect akin to winning a lottery.
That it is Newsom who is leading this charge against his hometown matters. For all its progressive reputation, one of the wealthiest cities in the wealthiest state in the wealthiest nation in the world is a hotbed of resistance when it comes to housing. Far too many residents see housing projects through the prism of whether they will crimp their lives. This absolutism leads them to use a kitchen-sink approach to NIMBYism that keeps adopting new tactics without concern about their consistency with past tactics. As new state laws have limited legal and regulatory monkey-wrenching tools provided by environmental rules to block projects, San Francisco critics are trying a new tactic: depicting new housing projects — even those with major set-asides for affordable units — as being stealthy steps toward further gentrifying a city that can feel downright feudal in its division between the wealthy elite and workers who are struggling to get by. That adding more units is the only way to realistically address a shortage is dismissed.
But while this problem may be acute in San Francisco, it is everywhere in modern California. In San Diego — found in a February analysis to be the most unaffordable place to buy a home in the U.S. — leaders who recognize the need to add at least 100,000 units by 2029 have a more constructive approach than in many cities. City leaders have embraced “density bonuses” that let developers build more units on parcels if the extra units are affordable to middle income households. And last month, a panel of housing advocates and industry veterans created by Mayor Todd Gloria recommended changing rules to allow for cheaper building materials and to make it easier to remove older, “historic” structures and comply with some water pollution mandates.
But just as in San Francisco, many local NIMBYs refuse to acknowledge that binding state laws require cities to act in good faith to add housing stock. Nor do they disavow fighting dirty. This November, a measure unanimously placed on the city ballot by the City Council would lift the 30-foot coastal building height limit for a 1,324-acre area of the Midway District that includes the sports arena — a site that appears ideal for a high-rise housing district because of its proximity to transit and freeways.
But this limited project may not be what critics run against. Instead, it may well be the claim that the mayor wants to turn San Diego into Miami Beach. That’s not true. Yet it doesn’t matter to those who want to preserve the city of their memory in perpetuity — whatever the toll on everyone else.