San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
A well-balanced housing effort
Like it or not, a whole lot of new housing is coming to San Francisco. Gov. Newsom and state housing officials have made it clear they intend to hold the city accountable for planning for more than 82,000 new units in the next eight years. The only question now is if we build that housing on our own terms or if we allow the state to shove it down our throats.
Proposition D on the November ballot is an earnest attempt at a well-balanced meal instead of a forced feeding.
It’s a streamlining measure, meaning it doesn’t provide any new funding for homes, affordable or otherwise — it simply removes red tape so that builders can get certain kinds of projects approved more quickly. That’s necessary because San Francisco has some of the most time-consuming, costly and arbitrary permitting processes in the country — in open violation of California law.
Prop. D sets strict deadlines for how quickly the planning department has to approve compliant projects — 150 days for projects 150 units or fewer and 240 days for larger developments. This is an immense improvement over the current permitting system, which too often takes years.
So what kinds of projects are eligible for these red tape cuts? The answer is wonky, so bear with us.
To start, 100% affordable projects built for people who earn up to 140% of the area median income are eligible. Prices at any given project can’t average higher than 120% AMI, which is currently $166,250 for a family of four. Mixed-income developments at the same thresholds, meanwhile, where 25% of units are kept below market rate, are also qualified.
Opponents of Prop. D say these income levels are too high, and will result in new housing that isn’t truly affordable. The most well-known streamlining bill at the state level, SB35, sets an affordability threshold of 80% AMI — that’s $110,850 for a family of four.
But, of course, it’s precisely because we already have lower-income streamlining opportunities that San Francisco needs new tools. And Prop. D caps rental prices at 80% of a neighborhood’s current market rate — a significant improvement in affordability over the status quo.
The median home price in San Francisco is roughly $1.3 million. The median rent is $2,371 as of August, and that’s actually down 8.5% from before the pandemic. Yes, this is woefully out of reach for lowincome people. But it’s also out of reach for most middleclass workers, too. Where are teachers and bus drivers and sanitation workers supposed to live? Many make decent livings that would afford a high quality of life in most of the country.
But not in San Francisco. Should Muni workers, whose median salary is $116,000, have to commute
from Vallejo because we exclusively focus on building affordable housing for very low-income people?
Of course not. That’s a recipe for the kind of debilitating staffing shortages that we’re currently seeing at San Francisco Public Works.
We need to streamline housing construction for all kinds of people who can’t afford the market rate. Furthermore, nothing about Prop. D stops developers from building homes for lower income workers; available tax incentives for these developments won’t magically disappear. And if the city doesn’t like the mix of housing it sees built from Prop. D, it can and should jump into social housing construction with a priority on closing any affordability gaps.
There are other things to like about Prop. D.
To take advantage of the measure’s streamlining, developers
must pay construction workers “prevailing wages,” which include union-level salaries as well as health insurance and access to apprenticeship programs that can set them on the pathway to union membership. Unions are still well positioned to win building contracts under this language, but other workers can earn a living wage, too. This is important, because low wages are rampant in the construction industry, but there aren’t enough union workers to handle the volume of housing San Francisco needs to meet its state-mandated quota. Prop. D will ensure all workers are well-compensated while preventing construction delays due to a lack of available labor.
Some opponents of Prop. D contend, bizarrely, that developers will build only expensive studios and one-bedroom units for wealthy tech bros under these streamlining rules.
Well, no.
City planning codes already dictate that dense developments need to contain a certain amount of multi-bedroom units. But, beyond that, don’t single people need places to live, too? This isn’t the 1950s. People are marrying and having kids much later in life, if at all. If we don’t build housing for them, what’s to stop those who can afford it from getting roommates and taking up all the existing two- and threebedroom units the city has to offer?
Change is coming. It’s way past time we planned for it.
No, Prop. D won’t solve the city’s housing crisis on its own. But it is an earnest attempt to grapple with many of the realities of our housing needs — and with the expectations Gov. Newsom has made it clear he plans to hold us accountable to.
The measure deserves your yes vote accordingly.