No option ruled out

It’s not just difficult to get housing built in San Francisco. It’s even difficult to get homeless housing built in the city.

Everyone in San Francisco agrees that we need to move the city’s substantial number of hard-core homeless individuals off of our streets and into housing. So the news that a local developer, Patrick Kennedy, is willing and able to build as many as 200 tiny, modular micro-unit apartments above a city-owned parking lot quickly should have been greeted with cheers.

Instead, it’s been met with the usual uncertainties.

The major construction unions don’t want any units to be built in China. They’re also balking at the units’ modularity, because building codes might be less strict for modular construction.

Meanwhile, the new head of the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing isn’t sure about building housing on cityowned land. That’s a head scratcher, considering Mayor Ed Lee’s own Public Land for Housing program. It’s hard to imagine a more relevant use for public land than housing those who can’t manage to house themselves.

Ultimately, these are concerns that can and should be worked out with a minimum of fuss — so that the housing can be created fast. That certainly seems to be the spirit in the Los Angeles area, where officials have met Kennedy with excitement. The country’s first supportive housing complex made from metal stacking units is beginning to be assembled in Orange County.

If only San Francisco could be a leader on this issue.