This might be the defining issue in the race to succeed Nancy Pelosi
By J.D. Morris, Alexei Koseff,Staff WritersDec 9, 2025
Gift Article
An affordable housing complex at 383 Sixth Ave., formerly 4200 Geary Blvd., became a vivid example of a bitter divide between Scott Wiener and Connie Chan over their approaches to new housing.Lea Suzuki/S.F. Chronicle
State Sen. Scott Wiener and San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan stood side by side, smiling, as they cut a ceremonial red ribbon to mark the debut of a new affordable-housing complex on the west side of the city last month.
Days later, however, the building at Geary Boulevard and Sixth Avenue — a former funeral home transformed into 98 apartments for low-income seniors — became a vivid example of a bitter divide between Wiener and Chan that could fuel their dueling campaigns to represent San Francisco in Congress.
When Chan entered the race to succeed Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi on Nov. 20, her announcement video featured an image of the Geary apartments as she took a thinly veiled dig at Wiener, who has for years opposed Chan in San Francisco’s notoriously fractious housing debates. As a supervisor representing the Richmond District, Chan said she had “built real affordable housing, not the Sacramento version that destroys our neighborhoods.”
“This is rich,” Wiener retorted. He pointed out that the Geary site took advantage of several recent state laws aimed at increasing housing development — including one that he passed. In a news release, he accused Chan of taking credit for others’ work to cover her own thin record.
The sniping immediately catapulted housing to the center of the race at a time, more than six months before the primary, when candidates are usually just introducing themselves to voters. The campaign could open yet another front in the eternal NIMBY vs. YIMBY war and potentially turn the contest to succeed Pelosi into a referendum on the best way to bring down astronomical rents and home prices.
Though Congress is not traditionally where most Americans look for housing policy, it’s becoming an increasingly potent issue in Washington during this era of affordability politics. And in a safely Democratic seat, where the major candidates are all running as various shades of progressive, it could be the most significant differentiating factor.
“One of the reasons we have a housing crisis is because the federal government has not thought of housing as their role,” said Rep. Laura Friedman, a Burbank Democrat who jumped to Congress from the state Assembly last year and recently introduced a bill that would exempt certain infill housing projects from federal environmental reviews.
How the candidates align
Either Wiener or Chan would likely be among the most left-leaning members of Congress if elected in November. But locally, they represent different factions of a long-running political schism centered on housing — and the specific steps that policymakers should take to reduce living costs in one of the country’s most expensive cities.
On one side of the debate are Wiener and his allies in the YIMBY movement that seeks to cut red tape and spur development of all new housing, including market-rate apartments and condominiums.
Wiener told the Chronicle he wants to return to the mid-20th century, when the United States built large amounts of new affordable housing. If elected to Congress, he would like to create a federal social housing program, despite the Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to slash housing assistance, and help scale up apprenticeship programs for construction workers.
“We need to get government back in the business of housing,” Wiener said. “The cost of housing is profoundly more important to people’s lives than the cost of eggs.”
On the other side are Chan and others who focus their advocacy more specifically on government-funded affordable housing, protecting low-income tenants from displacement and preserving the character of historic neighborhoods.
Chan described her approach to housing to the Chronicle as “not for special interests” but rather “for San Franciscans” — especially lower-income workers feeling increasingly priced out by the city’s affordability crisis. She said Congress should create more ways to fund affordable-housing construction, as the city did by getting voters to approve a 2019 bond that helped pay for the Geary project.
“You can have a lot of housing be made available and built, but if people cannot afford it because they just can’t with their salary, that in and of itself is an affordability crisis,” Chan said. “There’s no one-size-fits-all approach, and there’s definitely not … one policy (that) will just be able to magically build housing. Many factors have to come together.”
It’s not the first time Chan and Wiener have been on opposite sides of an expensive electoral fight where housing was a top issue. In 2022, they backed dueling — and ultimately unsuccessful — ballot measures that aimed to fast-track housing development.
Then there’s Saikat Chakrabarti, a former Silicon Valley entrepreneur and aide to progressive favorite Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who originally entered the race offering a generational change to Pelosi. Now he’s betting that San Francisco residents are weary of the polarized housing debate exemplified by Chan and Wiener and is trying to position himself as an appealing alternative.
He described himself as “an all-of-the-above person when it comes to housing,” stressing that he wants to cut red tape to accelerate development while also expanding funds for low-income housing. His housing proposals include calling for the establishment of a federal agency that could offer low-interest financing to pay for home construction.
“Look at what the results have been of the current nature of tribal politics in this city,” Chakrabarti said. “The result has been a housing crisis, a cost-of-living crisis, and it’s become harder and harder to actually live in this city. We have to be willing to talk about new ideas.”
What’s happening in D.C.
Disputes over housing policy would more typically animate a race for the Board of Supervisors or the state Legislature than for Congress, but the urgency around this issue is ramping up in national politics.
Suddenly the buzzword everywhere is “affordability” — and the cost of housing, which was turbocharged nationwide by the pandemic, is the biggest driver, bringing the rest of the country into a debate that has long consumed California.
During last year’s presidential election, President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris both touted plans to increase the housing supply and provide financial assistance for homebuyers. Though it has not ultimately been a focus of Trump’s first year back in office, he did last month float a controversial idea to create a 50-year-mortgage, while also proposing to slash billions of dollars for homelessness programs.
Meanwhile, a small group of lawmakers is trying to elevate the issue in Congress, where housing policy lately has mostly meant district earmarks and other appropriations. Two new bipartisan caucuses, the Congressional YIMBY Caucus and the Build America Caucus, formed in the past year to promote housing construction and streamline development.
And a sweeping bill that has excited housing advocates could pass before the end of the year attached to the defense spending measure. It includes dozens of provisions aimed at boosting production, including prioritizing federal funding for projects near public transit and in opportunity zones, rolling back federal environmental reviews for infill housing, and developing federal recommendations for state and local zoning, as well as “pattern books” of approved designs that can be adopted by local planning departments. Many of these ideas align with state laws that Wiener and other YIMBY-aligned legislators pursued in Sacramento over the past decade.
“This is the biggest congressional policy play on housing in a generation,” said Ben Metcalf, managing director of the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley. He said housing is the rare policy issue these days where divisions are not partisan — liberal and conservative states have begun passing similar laws to address the affordability crisis — which gives Congress cover to actually take action.
‘Voters are tired of the same political factions’
It remains to be seen, however, whether the congressional race can sustain a nuanced debate about what that federal vision for housing policy should be. In San Francisco, housing is always a hot-button topic, and the campaign threatens to be consumed by more immediate fights dominating local politics.
The Board of Supervisors, which shifted to the center in 2024, just passed a sweeping plan from Mayor Daniel Lurie to allow taller and denser housing on the west side of the city — with support from Wiener and YIMBY groups and despite opposition from Chan. Critics including former Supervisor Aaron Peskin, a longtime Chan ally, are now floating a countermeasure to protect more rent-controlled housing from demolition.
Details are still up in the air, but Chan, one of four supervisors to vote against Lurie’s zoning plan, has indicated that she’d likely support the measure, which could appear on the ballot at the same time she is trying to turn out supporters for her congressional bid.
“If City Hall won’t listen to the people, we know what San Franciscans can do,” Chan told the Chronicle before supervisors approved the zoning plan. “I’m going to work with stakeholders and see what their next steps are, and that includes an option for a ballot measure.”
Wiener criticized Chan’s positioning in the race as “a very, very cynical way” to “galvanize NIMBYism” to boost her campaign.
“She’s trying to harness the energy that got us into this crisis and ride it all the way to Congress,” he said.
San Francisco labor leader Rudy Gonzalez said he hopes the race doesn’t devolve into the “progressive versus moderate or YIMBY versus NIMBY” mudslinging that has characterized past political fights on housing.
Gonzalez’s labor group, the influential San Francisco Building and Construction Trades Council, has not backed a candidate in the race, which could unlock money and volunteers. The council endorsed Wiener in his first state Senate campaign and Chan in her reelection campaign last year. He said that to win, both will need to “show themselves as different, as having new ideas.”
“I think San Francisco voters are tired of the same political factions repeating,” he said.
Dec 9, 2025
City Hall Reporter
J.D. Morris covers San Francisco City Hall, focused on Mayor Daniel Lurie. He joined the Chronicle in 2018 to cover energy and spent three years writing mostly about PG&E and California wildfires.
Before coming to the Chronicle, he reported on local government for the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, where he was among the journalists awarded a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of the 2017 North Bay wildfires.
He was previously the casino industry reporter for the Las Vegas Sun. Raised in Monterey County and Bakersfield, he has a bachelor’s degree in rhetoric from UC Berkeley.
Staff writer
Alexei Koseff is the Washington, D.C., correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle, chronicling President Donald Trump’s policies targeting California and the tension between the state and the federal government, as well as how powerful Bay Area figures are shaping — or thwarting — solutions in Washington.
He is rejoining the Chronicle from CalMatters, where he covered Gov. Gavin Newsom and state government. Previously, he previously served as a Capitol reporter for the Chronicle and spent five years in the Capitol bureau of the Sacramento Bee. Alexei is a Bay Area native and attended Stanford University. He speaks fluent Spanish.
