San Francisco is finally starting to face its chronic housing shortage – at least rhetorically. There is a growing consensus that our city must embrace the “politics of yes.” For many, this is a breath of fresh air sweeping through our housing gridlock. But old habits die hard, and the longstanding tradition of abusing public process to scale back housing is still very much with us.
So, what is the holdup on housing?
The first constraint is simply our restrictive zoning that outright bans apartment buildings in many neighborhoods. In places like Glen Park, the city forbids multifamily apartment buildings so very few people benefit from the major public investment of a BART station.
The second constraint is our byzantine public process where we allow people to fight housing at hearing after hearing after hearing. If you want to get a flavor for these unpredictable and often emotional hearings, tune in to SFGOV TV. Like a city planning game show, you never know what will happen, because rarely do consistent rules apply.
In housing, everything is a negotiation, and everything is up for appeal. While zoning may allow 4 stories, if your neighbors hate it, commissions often declare a ‘compromise’ and chop off a floor. It’s hard to believe in this housing shortage, but even zoning compliant projects will be scaled back under neighbors arguments that they will “lose privacy of backyards” or views.
Sometimes, as with India Basin, the argument that a private business, in this case the Archimedes Banya, would lose their roof-deck view falls on deaf ears. But there is little rhyme or reason on these outcomes, and the cost of fighting neighbors’ appeals is steep. Even when housing wins, the appeals and negotiations are costly in both time and money.
In a recent study by Zillow, with the telling title, “Home Values Grew Most in Markets With Strictest Land Use Regulations,” researchers found that “When land use regulations are more restrictive, builders seem to wait until home values reach a certain level before they can justify jumping through the regulatory hurdles or paying the high costs of permits.”
This makes sense. Most people don’t buy lottery tickets until the pot is huge – and when getting permits is as unpredictable as a lottery, most developers won’t even try until we’re at “luxury” prices. Part of the reason we are building “luxury” housing because our regulations make only “luxury” housing feasible.
If we want middle income housing built, we have to make permitting sane. So, how do we make permitting fast, fair and predictable? I think it’s time we called B.S. on the truly bad behaviors that add unnecessary delay and cost to housing opportunities in San Francisco:
1. People don’t own their view. Stop giving the benefit of the doubt to those who want to slow good housing opportunities because their views might be blocked. Views are nice, but they’re not a right and they must change over time. Planners and elected officials need to make clear that a handful of people’s views will never merit the consideration they must give to people being displaced by high housing prices.
2. Parking is not a right. We cannot allow parking complaints to hold up long-overdue projects, such as DM Development’s 2465 Van Ness Avenue project where neighbors tried to force the developer to provide more parking than the Planning Code even permits. If people are worried about traffic, they should be sent to the MTA, SFPD, Planning Department and agencies like the MTC to go advocate for better transit. A commitment to Vision Zero means we must move away from car-centric infrastructure. We are in a housing shortage, and last-minute brinkmanship about parking is nothing short of immoral.
3. Finally, stop making nice with those who insincerely cloak themselves in social and environmental concerns, but whose real goal is to stop housing. Look behind their complaints about views, parking, shadows, air quality and traffic and you’ll likely find a price tag that has more to do with individuals’ aspirations about their property values than social justice.
Right now, we’re in the midst of one such negotiation around one of the few housing components of the Central SOMA Plan. A wealthy penthouse owner and a few of his friends at SFBlu (the condos at 631 Folsom) are advocating for the “midrise option” to ensure they’ll maintain the panoramic views of downtown San Francisco, no matter how many units of housing it will cost us.
Jonathan Berk is a conservative Stanford Business School professor and Wall Street consultant who has written that he thinks the corporate income tax should be eliminated, and opposes the concept of a government guaranteed minimum income for working-age adults. Unsurprisingly, Berk’s belief in a free and deregulated market evidently does not apply when it impacts his views. He thinks our government should come to his rescue to protect his penthouse. Regressive regulations that line his pocket seem a-ok to this capitalist.
Berk’s two-story plus private deck penthouse at 631 Folsom is now valued at more than $3 million, and, to be fair, has some pretty sweet private and unobstructed views:
The sweet view from Professor Berk's $3 million condo, which may be painfully obstructed by new housing.
It’s tempting to believe Berk’s and the condo association president (who also resides in the top part of the building) Gina Cariaga’s, arguments, filed in numerous documents from the well-paid attorneys. Complaints about why the height of one project, One Vassar, a mixed-use development of the Central SOMA Plan at Second and Harrison streets, focus on the oft-cited causes of neighborhood preservation, air quality, traffic, noise, etc.
But review his numerous filings, voice over videos, and arguments and one glaring motivation shines through like sunshine on a roof-deck. His solution: have the building that will partially alter his views drop its height from approved heights of 350 feet and 200 feet down to 130 feet. Preserve his views and - poof! - the negative neighborhood impacts seem to disappear. 613 Folsom, also known as SF Blu, has been threatening a lawsuit to stop the plan if the penthouse owners don’t get their way.
Hilariously enough, it’s not clear at all that Berk’s neighbors in the Blu condo association even support his acting in their name. Those poor saps living on the bottom half of Blu probably don’t even know about this controversy.
The Central SOMA Plan is now before the Board of Supervisors, and committee review will start in September. Like any major development, I expect it will undergo tweaking and we’ll see more than a little deal-making. And Supervisors have a perverse incentive to keep this system going. When everything is a negotiation, elected officials get to play the magnanimous “deal-maker” who hands out neighborhood benefits. Until we fix this broken system, San Francisco will have to endure many more time-consuming and costly “negotiations.” But I hope the Board examines exactly who we are negotiating with and what their motivations are. San Francisco must reject the shameless self-interest of Prof. Berk and SFBlu.
Their ridiculous arguments have no place in a time of genuine crisis.
Laura Clark is a San Francisco resident, pro-housing activist, and Executive Director for YIMBY Action.
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