In late August, Manson Leung, an organizer for the Chinatown-based nonprofit Self-Help For the Elderly, invited Sunset District residents to hear his pitch for more affordable housing in their neighborhood, a wide swath of San Francisco that for decades has resisted new development.
Leung’s presentation over Zoom was a persuasive look at a dilemma generations in the making, now urgent thanks to new state mandates to build more housing. It didn’t quite fall on deaf ears; the call had three other people on it, myself included. But the sparse attendance showed how hard it is to make a case for the future of affordable housing on the west side.
A battle to make sweeping changes to zoning is coming soon. But there’s no guarantee it’ll come to pass. Until then, a recent state law — penned by one of SF’s own lawmakers — is quietly making argument and persuasion less necessary for some developers.
Uneasy in the west
In the neighborhood of more than 29,000 homes, there are only 45 affordable housing units total, Leung said, whilethe city has received more than 4,130 applications for affordable housing from Sunset residents. (A Planning Department representative confirmed this figure for The Frisc, calling it “sadly accurate.” The city’s latest Housing Balance report noted 156 affordable homes have been approved in the Sunset but not yet built.)
Meanwhile, 40 percent of Sunset renters qualify as rent-burdened, spending more than one-third of their monthly income on housing, and the median home price is $1.2 million — which, according to Leung, comes out to about $1,500 monthly in property taxes at current rates. “Even people who own a home and make good money have something to worry about,” he added.
SF’s new housing plan, called the Housing Element, is taking on this west-side paucity. It mandates that 25 percent to 50 percent of new affordable units should go in “well-resourced neighborhoods” to address historical inequities that left many city neighborhoods all but frozen in time. The Sunset was identified as one of the highest resource areas in the city.
“When we downzoned the west side, we let the homeowners’ associations write the plan, and we did it in a way as if they were doing us a favor,” Sam Moss, director of the affordable housing developer Mission Housing, tells The Frisc, referring back to the city’s 1978 Residential Rezoning.
Eastern focus
The city emphasized its Eastern Neighborhoods Plan starting in 2009, concentrating market-rate and subsidized developments into neighborhoods like SoMa, Dogpatch, and Potrero Hill.
But that long-percolating plan passed just as San Francisco was about to catapult into another tech boom that drove its population higher and rocketed housing prices into the stratosphere. (Rents were already relatively high; SF was never Stockton or Modesto, even at the worst of times.)
In 2012 alone, the city’s population grew by more than 13,400 people, but we added fewer than 1,300 units to the housing inventory. It’s clear what happened to rents and home prices next.
With the new Housing Element in place, SF only has eight years to make way for 46,000 new affordable units. The Planning Department estimates it takes an average of seven years to develop new affordable housing, and planners are working with other city agencies to shave years off that development time.
But even if red tape is cut and fees are lowered, a different question looms large: Who is going to build it?
Three of San Francisco’s largest affordable housing developers tell The Frisc they presently have no plans for west side projects. One developer representative, who asked for anonymity to speak frankly, pointed to entrenched neighborhood opposition as one factor. The Sunset, in fact, has quite an example: the yearslong drama that tangled up the 90-unit, 100 percent affordable project at 2550 Irving St.
Opponents at the Mid-Sunset Neighborhood Association cited alleged contamination from a former dry-cleaning business, but other complaints hinged on subjective issues like community outreach and “accountability to the neighborhood.” (Neither the project’s developer Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation nor the Mid-Sunset Neighborhood Association returned requests for comment.)
‘Extreme position’
Other critics got downright ugly. Because some of the units are reserved for formerly homeless residents, anonymous opponents circulated flyers predicting the building would be a “slum,” a “communist free homeless housing scheme,” and “the best place in San Francisco to buy heroin,” and even called then-Sup. Gordon Mar a “communist” for backing the project.
Mar tells The Frisc he believes most Sunset residents want more affordable housing, and the opposition was the product of “an extreme exclusionary position” by a minority.
“As a society gets richer, people see proximity as demanding moral perfection,” UCLA urban planning Prof. Michael Manville says. “If you’re doing well and you’ve got a nice apartment, it’s intolerable to you that someone is living in a one-room flat nearby. Of course, if you ban [that housing], that person will be on the street,” which is also intolerable.
The one SF affordable housing developer going all-in beyond Twin Peaks is the aforementioned Mission Housing, which is pitching five different western projects with supportive housing for the homeless, kicking off with the contentious 250 Laguna Honda site. “We’re choosing the most fun one to start with,” says Moss.
Moss may appear to be a glutton for punishment, but he’s confident a 2019 state law will help avoid the type of standoff that bogged down 2550 Irving. Penned by David Chiu, who now serves as SF’s city attorney, AB 2162 grants by-right status — a golden ticket for development that eliminates almost all red tape — to 100 percent affordable housing if it includes at least 20 percent supportive housing for the homeless.
“As long as the lot is large enough to build a code-compliant project, there’s no discretion” from neighbors or the city, Moss adds.
Sharon Rapport, policy director for the Corporation for Supportive Housing, which sponsored the bill, says that AB 2162 hasn’t gotten as much attention as other state housing laws because supportive housing, which comes bundled with services such as mental health care, is generally harder to finance and develop. Usually, only “mission-driven” nonprofits bother to try.
Rapport says the law hasn’t yet been used as often as her organization hoped, but it remains a versatile tool: “If we have enough state and local public subsidies to create 5,000 units per year, that’s how many potential units could get approved through the AB 2162 process.”
There may be neighborhood opposition to these proposals, but I have seen many people change their position and respond very positively to new housing once it’s finished.
SF city attorney David Chiu, who authored AB 2612 when he was in the California Assembly.
The bottleneck might be widening. When first contacted for this report, Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development spokesperson Anne Stanley told The Frisc that AB 2162 might not produce much. Stanley later emailed to note that five supportive-housing projects in SF — more than 500 homes total — have already been proposed under the law. The model offers some advantages, according to Stanley: “The state-mandated timelines are shorter, and you can develop on sites that have existing residential uses.”
For those willing to commit to its requirements, the law does indeed defang many attacks on new housing in places like the Irving corridor. The prevailing question remains whether neighborhoods that have barely built anything in decades might soon see hundreds of new affordable homes. But the question could soon shift to this: what could possibly stop them?
Chiu himself strikes an optimistic tone about SF housing culture. “There may be neighborhood opposition to these proposals, but I have seen many people change their position and respond very positively to new housing once it’s finished,” he tells The Frisc, citing the Edward II Inn as a once-controversial supportive housing project now blending into an upscale residential neighborhood.
Stanley notes that the city is planning a potentially game-changing upzoning in accordance with the Housing Element which could finally undo the legacy of that historical 1978 lockdown on height and density across much of the city. But community meetings are scheduled the rest of the year, and there’s no way to know what final effect it will have on our housing futures.
For now, Sacramento continues to provide the primary means for sunsetting the opposition of Sunset naysayers.