Measures to speed housing both fail
S.F. Props. D and E fail to surpass 50%
Two ballot measures to speed up housing construction in San Francisco — where residential projects can take years to plan and develop — both fell short as voters struggled to reconcile the competing proposals.
With about 95% of ballots from last week’s election counted as of Tuesday afternoon, neither ballot measure achieved the majority needed to pass: 48.8% of voters approved Proposition D, and 45.5% were in favor of Proposition E.
Despite key similarities, the backers of the propositions — from politically moderate and progressive camps, respectively — had each argued that their offering was a pathway out of San Francisco’s housing crisis, while the opposition would
take the city in the wrong direction.
Proponents for Prop. D have asserted that the competing measure confused voters. That made residents more likely to vote no, said political scientist Corey Cook in the lead-up to Election Day.
“We need to be pushing toward solutions, not creating obstruction, whether it’s in City Hall, or by proposing competing ballot measures,” said Jeff Cretan, spokesperson for Mayor London Breed, who backed Prop. D. Cretan said he believed the measure would have passed if Prop. E had not sown confusion.
“I think that’s just false,” said Julie Edwards, spokesperson for the Prop. E campaign. “They chose to take their ball and go the signature route” to getting Prop. D on the ballot, Edwards said, rather than continue to try to do it through the legislative process. Before its backers gathered signatures for Prop. D, a committee of the Board of Supervisors had prevented a previous version of it from moving on to the full board for consideration. The two board members who voted to hold it back were Aaron Peskin and Connie Chan, who would later support Prop. E.
Both propositions would have quickened the development process for various types of real estate projects, with the goal of helping San Francisco build the housing it sorely needs. Camps backing the measures were in pitched battle for months, with each arguing their measure’s superiority — while developers were skeptical that either measure would be enough to jump-start construction.
San Francisco must build about 82,000 housing units by 2030 or it could lose state funding. Even though more than 40,000 housing units have received some degree of approval to be built, construction is barely happening because costs are so high, developers say.
Real estate development in San Francisco is notoriously slow and expensive, and Breed and the Board of Supervisors have been at loggerheads for years over how to speed it up. After the board rejected a streamlining bill in January, local groups put the proposal’s latest version, Prop. D, on the ballot with Breed’s backing. The board followed suit with Prop. E to compete with it.
Rather than fix the city’s development process for all housing projects, the ballot measures would have offered fasttracking to certain projects that fulfilled various criteria. Prop. D would have required less of market-rate developers, such as the number of additional affordable housing units in their projects, than the competing Prop. E.
Supporters of Prop. D said their measure would spur more construction, while Prop. E’s supporters argued that faster construction must be paired with more housing for low-income residents.
Developers generally said that quickening the bureaucratic process would help projects pencil out, but that a major citywide uptick in construction would not occur until materials and labor become less expensive. The government should also consider trimming back some fees and the city’s baseline affordable housing requirement for market-rate projects, they said.
A public committee is tasked with analyzing whether that baseline should change to give rise to more construction in today’s difficult market. The Board of Supervisors could propose new levels.
The campaign committee for Prop. D had the financial high ground, with about $2.6 million at its disposal — more than any other committee, and almost three times what the Prop. E. committee raised, Ethics Commission data shows. But they were still unable to prevail.