Aaron Peskin, the president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and the city’s most influential politician this century, has housing on his mind, just as he has since he was first elected in 2000.
For the past 23 years, Peskin has been in and out of City Hall, serving time as head of SF’s Democratic Party in between terms as supervisor, keeping tabs on local affairs even when not in office.
During his long tenure, San Francisco has continued a long run of saying “no” to housing in most parts of town. Critics say Peskin is a main culprit in the naysaying. Peskin and boosters hold him up as a pioneer who has always embraced density.
The perception of Peskin as an enemy of development has both dogged and buoyed his political career for more than two decades, but now the city has come to a crossroads, struggling to reinvent and revitalize itself after the pandemic.
In many ways, Peskin acknowledges that SF must act boldly. It’s about street conditions, it’s about downtown, it’s about the economy, but it’s also deeply about housing, and as the conversation has shifted, the District 3 leader is right in the thick of it — and he may be about to cast his most consequential votes ever.
The man whom YIMBY Law director Sonja Trauss once called “a legendary hater” has made moves toward more housing density, partnering with Mayor London Breed to ease some types of downtown office-to-residential conversions and voting, over the objections of progressive colleagues, to lower temporarily the amount of affordable housing that must be included in new market-rate projects.
Peskin has also acknowledged that SF’s progressives are losing a messaging battle around housing. He has called “housing [and] housing affordability and homelessness” the city’s most “vexing” issues. He said that “it’s got to be better than ‘we’re trying’” if progressive newcomers and stalwarts alike want voters to take them seriously.
That sounds like the kind of talk San Francisco needs in this difficult time. But Peskin said it in a raw political moment, just after the demolition of longtime progressive colleague David Campos against another supervisor, Matt Haney, in a 2022 race for one of SF’s California Assembly seats. Haney put housing at the top of his agenda and hammered Campos as a NIMBY.
In a less forward-thinking moment, Peskin was a party to the 2021 vote to bar nearly 500 new homes from a downtown valet parking lot — a decision so egregious it helped push state watchdogs into an investigation of SF’s housing policy, the first of its kind. Those homes were in Haney’s district, he was all for them, and it was atypical for Peskin and other supes to undercut him.
That was just one vote, and Peskin had his share of accomplices. But it’s emblematic of the many other times when new housing was on the drawing board and Peskin undercut those efforts too.
Even his pro-housing votes have come with caveats: When the Board of Supervisors in January approved an historic blueprint that called for 82,000 new homes in SF by 2031, Peskin said aye, then in nearly the same breath slammed the plan because it likely wouldn’t produce its promised quota of affordable housing — more than half of the grand total. (The goal is indeed a difficult and ambitious one.)
[Update, 10/27/23: The California Department of Housing and Community Development finished its investigation and warned SF on Wednesday to overhaul its “notoriously complex, cumbersome, and unpredictable” housing approval process quickly or else risk losing local control.]
Aaron Dan Peskin has done more than his fair share to exacerbate San Francisco’s housing shortage. At times, though, he has also promoted housing beyond the call of duty.
While the insular world of City Hall may seem like mere politicking and “Succession”-style drama, SF’s most consequential housing votes of the past 50 years are coming up, with Peskin at the helm of the Board of Supervisors. What he decides could well make or break the future of the city, your neighborhood, and even your monthly housing budget.
Napoleonic ups and downs
Peskin was first elected to the Board of Supervisors in 2000, representing a district that covers North Beach, Telegraph Hill, and Chinatown, and he was reelected in 2004.
He became board president for two two-year terms starting in 2005. After being termed out, he kept power behind the scenes, serving as president of the San Francisco Democratic Party’s county central committee for a few years, known as the DCCC or D-triple-C.
He returned to the board after a 2015 special election and re-upped for two more full terms after that. City law precludes more than two consecutive terms, but permits running again after a break.
Peskin not only knows all the rules, but knows the people working in departments at a very deep level. A typical supe knows the mayor and the department heads, but after that they’re just playing politician.
matt gonzalez, Former president of the board of supervisors and chief attorney of the public defender’s office
This year, he became board president once again after 17 contentious rounds of voting. Leading candidates couldn’t gin up a majority, leaving space for Peskin as the compromise candidate. It was yet another case study of Peskin as the city’s consummate political actor.
“He not only knows all the rules, but knows the people working in departments at a very deep level,” says former supervisor and board president Matt Gonzalez. “You might have a typical supe who knows the mayor and the department heads, but after that they’re just playing politician. Aaron wins battles because he knows” how city government works, and how to leverage his role in it.
For most of his career, Peskin’s one major liability was his habit of calling up colleagues and city employees at night and subjecting them to tirades, which he’s since said were driven by alcohol.
In 2018, the then-fire chief even went public with a letter calling out Peskin for being “distracting and obstructive” during an incident; he apologized. After entering treatment for drinking in 2021, he’s rehabbed much of that bad reputation.
In a 2009 story referring to him as “the Napoleon of North Beach” (a nickname that would sell him short; he’s now been in office longer than Napoleon), former Chronicle columnist Heather Knight reported that Peskin had set a record as a “prolific” legislator, with more than 200 ordinances approved.
Peskin declined to be interviewed for this story, but in an emailed statement through his staff he called himself an advocate for “housing that makes sense for San Francisco.” (The Frisc made repeated requests to speak with Peskin, and posed questions to him via email; his office responded with a statement, which is available in full here.)
He’s arguably done more to shape San Francisco politics than any living non-mayor. Peskin might even run for mayor in 2024 (though he recently admitted to the SF Standard that he has not “succumbed” to supporters’ “entreaties”). And throughout his entire political career, the primary issue has been what gets built in SF and where.
Voices in some quarters can string together a long jeremiad of Peskin’s development snafus, like the use of eminent domain to block a park on Lombard Street in 2003, or joining a lawsuit to quash development on Treasure Island in 2014 (he was not holding public office at the time), or killing a 2021 proposal to keep single appellants from tying up SF developments in the state environmental review known as CEQA. (The very first thing Peskin did in office in 2001 was pledge to strengthen CEQA appeal rights in the city.) Even Peskin’s Wikipedia page has a section peppered with the projects he’s shot down.
During his pivotal 2015 special election campaign against then-Sup. Julie Christensen, opposition research highlighted Peskin’s perceived anti-housing agenda as a weak point. In that same race, former city planning commissioner and Christensen partisan Gwyneth Borden said Peskin was “against everything that represents progress in the city,” and in a 2016 SF Business Times article, critics branded Peskin “an obstructionist who blocks all development.”
The narrative of Peskin the arch-NIMBY has been one of the most consistent elements of his political career. The reality is much more complicated and surprising.
The houses that Aaron built
Plenty of SF politicians have burnished their progressive bona fides by branding themselves enemies of “luxury housing” and new development. Peskin’s record is rich enough that in 2007, San Francisco magazine dubbed him “Captain of the Skyline” and quoted him saying “we’re not scared of building high-rises” and “density is a good thing.”
In his email to this reporter, the supervisor emphasized his pro-development credentials, including work to promote “hundreds of units of affordable housing on all four public Embarcadero Freeway Parcels, and my legislation to incentivize thousands of rent-controlled accessory dwelling units citywide.”
SF can create affordable housing and preserve what’s best about our city. I understand many want a free hand to do whatever they want, wherever they want. They will not get that blank check from me.
Sup. Aaron Peskin
He’s also been willing to ease the path for market-rate housing in some SF neighborhoods. Former District 10 Sup. Sophie Maxwell touts Peskin’s support as pivotal for the Hunters Point Shipyard redevelopment. “People even tried to recall me over that,” she tells The Frisc. “Everyone had this ideological thing going on, but when people came in and said, ‘We need these homes,’ [Peskin] heard that. I told him, ‘These people are your constituents too,’ and he was my sixth vote” to manifest that ongoing project.
Peskin was also pivotal in passing the Eastern Neighborhoods Plan, which he touts as the “largest upzoning in city history,” driving a decade of expansion in neighborhoods like Dogpatch, Potrero Hill, and SoMa. (That plan was even derided by certain advocates as a giveaway to developers.)
He also had a big hand pushing through the Parkmerced overhaul, a rare west side development with more than 3,700 units on tap.
What’s more, there have been occasions when Peskin was ahead of his time. “We worked with his office on the citywide ADU legislation,” recalls architect and planning code expert Mark Hogan, who also collaborated with Peskin earlier this year on office-to-housing conversion rules.
ADUs, or accessory dwelling units, are small secondary apartments built in garages or extra bedrooms or backyards. (Sometimes these are called granny flats.) They were common but illegal for decades, but Peskin was an early advocate to bring them out into the light.
“He was instrumental in getting that passed on a citywide level,” Hogan tells The Frisc, noting that Peskin’s first bid failed, but politicians with aggressive housing policies (including eventual campaign foe Julie Christensen and current Sacramento housing champion Sen. Scott Wiener) took up the baton.
Even some of SF’s most zealous density proponents say there’s more to Peskin’s legacy. “He doesn’t think building as much housing as possible should be the priority,” says Corey Smith, director of SF’s Housing Action Coalition. But Smith concedes that “I don’t think you can always just call Aaron a NIMBY because you disagree with him on certain things.”
Smith cites instances like the city’s recent inclusionary fee reductions, where Peskin was crucial to seal the deal. Smith insists YIMBYs would be better off finding common ground with him: “There’s nuance to this — he’s always interested in adapting.” (Smith also says “it’s a pain in the ass if he’s opposing something we’re on.”)
Why does the anti-housing rap cling to him so persistently? “I think key votes haunt him,” says Janan New, director of the San Francisco Apartment Association, citing the valet parking lot/469 Stevenson vote as a haunting example.
SFAA has butted heads with Peskin over housing votes, but has also relied on him, even endorsed him, in the past. Peskin is himself a small landlord who will often listen to the group’s concerns when other progressives won’t, adds New.
Political priorities have changed significantly around housing.
Maggie Muir, political consultant and strategist
There’s also the fact that times have changed. Looking back on the 2015 campaign against Christensen, both candidates spent a lot of time arguing the merits of a proposed moratorium on new housing in the Mission. But now, with state housing mandates hovering over the city like an ominous Imperial Star Destroyer, the phrase “housing moratorium” sounds like a dead language.
“Political priorities have changed significantly around housing,” says Maggie Muir, who managed Christensen’s campaign, crediting Wiener, Breed, and YIMBY lobbying for pushing SF into this new normal. Christensen herself declined to comment on the record, as did 2020 District 3 challenger Danny Sauter, the aforementioned Boyd, and several other past critics.
To preserve and protect
One of Peskin’s earliest claims to fame was helping stall the demolition of the landmark Colombo Building in North Beach, and he marked his first public swearing-in with a speech about protection of historic buildings.
Years later, it was Peskin who put forth the ballot item that turned the Historic Preservation Commission into a power player. While he’s greased the path for new homes in neighborhoods like Dogpatch, Hunters Point, Parkmerced, and South of Market, his own backyard has been off-limits. In that 2007 “Captain of the Skyline” story, he called North Beach an “urban paradise,” and last year only three new homes were built in the neighborhood, although the Planning Department does record another 12 units created through “additions” to existing homes.
If times have changed, a lot of Peskin’s rhetoric hasn’t. In his email to The Frisc, Peskin said: “San Francisco can create affordable housing and preserve what’s best about our city. I understand many want a free hand to do whatever they want, wherever they want, even if that means leaving low-income children in shadows, or creating traffic gridlock, or leaving San Franciscans to pay for the new services their condo towers demand. They will not get that blank check from me.”
This “Protect the Block” attitude lives on in things like arguments over the fate of the Castro Theatre, in which Peskin was the sole dissenting “protest vote” against amended plans to alter some of the storied venue’s interior features, such as fixed seats. And the preservationist side of his dance card has earned him loyalty.
Gen Fujioka, director of the Chinatown Community Development Center, tells The Frisc “there’s no doubt that Chinatown would not have retained its social cultural identity without Sup. Peskin’s service.” (Chinatown votes were vital in returning Peskin to City Hall in 2015, being one of the only neighborhoods to break 50 percent turnout in that low-volume special election.)
In his 2000 campaign, Peskin ran as an outsider against the business-friendly machine of then-mayor Willie Brown; his campaign even distributed “Annoy Willie” buttons. He certainly made good on that promise, as things would sometimes get heated between them.
Peskin returned to office to reprise this role as a check on mayor and tech enthusiast Ed Lee. “I feel sorry for the mayor,” Brown quipped in a documentary about the 2015 election, anticipating Peskin’s return to the board. (Brown has also publicly complimented Peskin many times.) London Breed has also caught some of that combative relationship after taking office in the wake of Lee’s death.
Despite a calling to preserve what makes SF wonderful and to protect its most vulnerable residents, the city is now saddled with an almost satirically high cost of living. It’s ever harder for working people, immigrants, people of color, and everyday families to survive — the very same folks that Peskin’s generation of progressive politicians pledged to champion.
“Progressivism eventually becomes the status quo, and any status quo becomes conservative,” USF political science Prof. James Taylor tells The Frisc, adding that politicians and revolutionaries alike tend to hunker down around their accomplishments as time goes on.
Now San Francisco faces a make-or-break moment. In 2024 — the last year of Peskin’s current set of terms — he will preside over the legislative branch as it considers sweeping changes to zoning rules that could reshape San Francisco’s future.
This is nitty-gritty, technical policy, and it’s also big-picture politics; Aaron Peskin is at home on both fronts. He knows the city front and back, along with all of its players; he’s almost universally acknowledged as a savvy dealmaker; and, as he’s the first to point out, he has led on ambitious density plans in the past.
The question is, which Peskin are we going to get? The stakes are much higher than just the legacy of one politician. This is about what kind of city San Francisco will become in the generations to come.