Housing intransigence will be S.F.’s undoing

It has been well over a month since Gov. Gavin Newsom informed San Francisco officials that he was launching an unprecedented review of the city’s housing practices and that the state was rejecting our housing element, a legally mandated eight-year plan that details where California cities are supposed to build new housing.

Failing to pass a certified housing element by January would mean San Francisco would lose access to millions upon millions of state affordable housing funds. Yes, that’s as bad as it sounds.

So how have city officials responded? Have they shown the slightest bit of urgency?

Or even a smidgen of introspection? Not one ounce.

Supervisor Dean Preston responded to Newsom by calling the governor an agent in a neoliberal conspiracy to funnel money to housing developers. Almost every other supervisor besides Matt Dorsey has been silent on the issue, which might actually be a good thing if Preston’s example is any indication. What’s not good is that supervisors have yet to hold hearings on how to bring the city’s housing policies into compliance with state law and realistically plan for the more than 82,000 units of housing the state expects the city to build in the next eight years. Instead, they recently lumbered through a dog-and-pony hearing on single-family zoning, remaining genuinely perplexed that Mayor London Breed vetoed their previous fraudulent effort on that front.

Meanwhile, the Planning Commission rejected another plan to turn a South of Market parking lot into dense housing with eight affordable units.

For those of you who support building the housing San Francisco needs, this attitude — though perhaps not surprising — is no doubt infuriating.

For the rest of you who may be celebrating our city’s intransigence, meanwhile, behold! A glimpse of our collective future lies in Southern California. And you’re not going to like it.

Like San Francisco, the Los Angeles County coastal city of Redondo Beach isn’t exactly a bastion of pro-housing policies. In 2017, the city imposed a nearly yearlong ban on new mixed-income developments after residents complained about traffic.

So it was entirely unsurprising when the city failed to pass a compliant housing element earlier this year. Redondo officials, no doubt, assumed falling out of compliance would have the same effect it typically did in years past — nothing.

Instead, developer Leo Pustilnikov took advantage by submitting plans to develop a 50-acre coastal property he owns into a mixed-use development with over 2,300 units of housing. That’s potentially enough to add at least 5% to the city’s population on its own.

City officials were shocked; Pustilnikov didn’t even fill them in. This is the kind of project they would typically hoist from a tree and allow locals to beat like a piñata. But not this time.

Redondo Beach may be powerless to stop the project even if everyone in the city hates it. That’s because when a city fails to pass a compliant housing element, state law strips the most potent tools cities have to block these developments. This is the so-called “builder’s remedy.”

Don’t like the architecture? Too tall? It will cause traffic? It’s totally out of scale with the neighborhood?

Too bad, so sad.

“2,300 housing units? No way,” City Council Member Todd Loewenstein responded when informed of the plan. Yes way, Todd.

Redondo Beach could get lucky in that the California Coastal Commission may overrule the development, given its beachside location. But there will be no such a bailout in San Francisco.

“Even if this one Redondo project ends up getting killed by the Coastal Commission, it’s definitely a harbinger of what could be coming to San Francisco if the supes don’t get their act together,” says UC Davis law Professor Chris Elmendorf.

Calling Newsom and his housing department a neoliberal shill for real estate speculators might play in some corners of Twitter. But doing that and nothing else is 100% certain to ensure the city won’t come into compliance with state laws. By refusing to take its housing element seriously, San Francisco isn’t just going to cut off funds for the kind of affordable developments it says it wants, it’s going to invite the kinds of projects that even some YIMBYs might suggest are too over-the-top — huge car-centric developments with loads of parking away from public transit, for instance.

Sure, doing so would confirm the most conspiratorial rhetoric over developers’ evil intent. But why wouldn’t at least a few developers, frustrated by years of trying to play by the city’s rules, only to have their projects arbitrarily delayed or denied, light the match and burn their last bridges on the way out the door.

This is a scenario people should want our leaders to try to prevent, not stampeding every time a new apartment complex casts a shadow on a parklet.

Change is coming, whether San Francisco likes it or not.

That development San Francisco says it would rather stay a parking lot than new housing? Staffers for Assembly Member Buffy Wicks tell me they’re fairly certain her bill AB2011, which is awaiting Newsom’s signature, would provide by-right approval for such a project should it come up again.

Local control is on its last legs. Our leaders can plan for that future pragmatically in a way that strives to meet the city’s values. Or they can make an impotent last stand on Twitter — and allow destiny to steamroll over many of the things this city loves.