by Randy Shaw on April 1, 2024 (BeyondChron.org)
Breed-Peskin Battle Over Housing
SF YIMBY’S Face Housing Backlash
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted 8-3 last week to override Mayor Breed’s veto of legislation downzoning a portion of District 3. The battle became framed as a conflict between Mayor Breed and Board President Peskin. It’s a dispute over housing policy that voters will decide in the November mayor’s race.
What did the Board’s vote reveal about where San Francisco voters stand on YIMBY-backed upzoning measures? And on building new housing overall?
Here’s my take.
Understanding San Francisco
I have promoted a build more housing strategy in San Francisco since 1993. I allied with the Residential Builders Association two decades before the emergence of the city’s “YIMBY” movement.
My Generation Priced Out: Who Gets to Live in the New America was the first book to expose how San Francisco progressives worsened affordability by opposing new housing. I detailed how the progressive neighborhoods of Bernal Heights and Haight Ashbury made housing more expensive for others while existing homeowners profited by restricting supply. I also charted how the progressive anti-housing movement began in the last 1990’s and continued ever since.
My book showed that San Francisco was no exception: the failure to build housing also raised housing prices in Los Angeles, Austin, Seattle and over a dozen “blue” cities. I saw the growth of the YIMBY movement as essential to make urban America affordable to the new working and middle-class.
I bring up my perspective because I want housing built. My concern is over the political strategy of some San Francisco housing advocates. I see the movement overestimating public support for the “all upzoning is good” approach. And wrongly demeaning anyone who opposes any project as “anti-housing.”
It’s never been easy building housing in San Francisco. The current moment requires a far more strategic and realistic approach.
Supervisors Defer to Electorate
The Board of Supervisors opposes specific housing projects because members believe that’s what their constituents want. Last week’s downzoning veto was overridden by Supervisors Catherine Stefani, Ahsha Safai and Rafael Mandelman. None are typically seen as NIMBYs. Supervisor Myrna Melgar joined Mandelman among the eight votes against the 500-unit project for the Nordstrom’s parking lot; Melgar also is not identified as a NIMBY (Safai voted for that project).
In 2019 Supervisor Matt Haney joined his colleagues in unanimously killing 63 apartment units (15 affordable) because during limited hours it would partially shade a South of Market park. Haney is seen as very pro-housing.
I supported both SOMA developments and the mayor’s veto. But I don’t see these defeats defining the Board as “anti-housing.” These outcomes instead tell me that pro-housing advocates need to do a lot more to build public support.
I understand YIMBYs frustration with those wrongly blaming new housing for reducing affordability—after all, I wrote a book arguing the contrary. But that’s the San Francisco we are dealing with.
Displaying a condescending attitude toward opponents will not change their perspective. Nor will claiming, as one veto supporter did, that Mayor Breed was “the only adult in the room.”
San Francisco faces a growing citywide backlash against the upzoning laws passed in Sacramento. These laws preempt local control over land use policies. Housing advocates like me strongly supported these measures but many San Francisco voters do not.
I recently wrote about Westside moderates and conservatives defying conventional wisdom and backing Aaron Peskin in the mayor’s race. Pro-housing advocates ignore this backlash at their peril.
Pro-Housing Election Outcomes
I can think of one San Francisco election in the past 25 years where a candidate’s position on building housing may have impacted the outcome: Matt Haney’s big victory over David Campos in the 2022 Assembly race. But there were other issues in that race and Haney’s victory preceded the state upzoning laws that San Franciscans are now up in arms about.
Scott Wiener is a statewide hero to YIMBYs. But upzoning San Francisco neighborhoods was not a core feature of his 2016 Senate campaign against Jane Kim.
No candidate in San Francisco’s post-1999 district election era has lost because they opposed housing. Joel Engardio, the only candidate to defeat an elected incumbent, won due to his support for the DA and School Board recalls; D4 voters were not penalizing Gordon Mar for opposing housing.
Moderates’ recent takeover of the San Francisco Democratic Party was a referendum on public safety, algebra in schools, and voters overall negative perception of the city’s direction; the slate’s victory was not a referendum on new state upzoning laws.
Mayor Breed wants the November election to be a referendum on her pro-housing policy. Aaron Peskin is essentially saying “Bring it on.”
A New Strategy
I want San Francisco to build the housing it needs to make the city more affordable to the working and middle-class. I know that changing the minds of housing opponents is not easy.
But San Francisco YIMBYs must be more strategic in the current political landscape. The city’s history over the past forty years shows that resistance to housing is deeply entrenched. Overcoming resistance in the local political arena requires a scalpel, not a sledgehammer.
That means not demanding that developers get to build every project to the maximum height and density allowed under state law. It also means not assuming that opponents of 15-story buildings will just as vigorously oppose six story projects, even though some do.
A winning strategy also means respecting concerns about questionable housing developments from the handful of non-gentrified neighborhoods. It also means—much as it troubles me to say— that the concerns of single-family homeowner neighborhoods get addressed so that some housing actually gets built in these areas.
Many YIMBYs seem to believe that the state-mandate for San Francisco to build 82,000 housing units (46,000 affordable) gives them leverage in housing policy fights. I hear it all the time: how can the city reach its 82,000 goal if you vote against this project?
Guess what? The 82,000 mandate means nothing to most San Franciscans (most are not even aware of that number or where it comes from). Few outside housing advocates care if San Francisco meets this goal.
I suggest dropping mention of the 82,000 entirely. YIMBYs must talk in terms of people, not density bonuses, Housing Elements and other wonky arguments. Advocates should instead focus on the core argument: new housing must be built in order for the children of current homeowners and the next generation of the city’s working and middle-class to live in San Francisco.
That’s always been the most winning argument. Let’s stop talking as if the only reason the city should build housing is to avoid a spanking from the state (the Builder’s Remedy threat is real but it won’t sway housing opponents for years if ever).
YIMBYs have always included those who think the best solution is one involving the least government regulation. But that position doesn’t work in San Francisco or in other “blue” cities. YIMBYs success in Sacramento reflects the movement’s flexibility in cultivating a more politically diverse group of legislators. San Francisco housing advocates must use that big tent approach if the city is ever going to get enough housing built.
YIMBYs should push for a city where a majority actually supports building a lot more housing—not a San Francisco where residents feel compelled by state mandates to accept it.
Randy Shaw
Randy Shaw is the Editor of Beyond Chron and the Director of San Francisco’s Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which publishes Beyond Chron. Shaw’s latest book is Generation Priced Out: Who Gets to Live in the New Urban America. He is the author of four prior books on activism, including The Activist’s Handbook: Winning Social Change in the 21st Century, and Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century. He is also the author of The Tenderloin: Sex, Crime and Resistance in the Heart of San Francisco
