Yes to Housing in Our Backyards

To Achieve Affordable Housing, San Francisco Should Steal New York’s Game Plan (like I Did with This NYT Op/Ed)

Friday the New York Times published an editorial supporting New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s ambitious plan make housing more affordable:

Yes to Housing in Our Backyards

Much of the Times piece could be applied to San Francisco, a city whose population has grown dramatically faster than our supply of housing. And as America re-urbanizes, the people will not stop coming.

While NYC’s leaders are responding with ambitious plans to expand the housing stock, in San Francisco our leaders are spinning their wheels with wimpy goals that will barely make a dent in the pent-up demand for apartments and condos.

New York’s plan includes adding 80,000 new housing units and preserving 120,000 existing affordable units.

This comes after the previous mayor, Michael Bloomberg, added 100,000 housing units (mostly market rate) to New York’s housing supply, which resulted rents actually declining in Manhattan.

In San Francisco, an average of 1,500 new housing units are built each year. Mayor Ed Lee and our Board of Supervisors also plan to build 30,000 affordable units, hardly a bold vision to expand the housing supply.

According to the Examiner, 20,000 people moved to San Francisco between 2010 and 2012. By 2040, another 200,000 people will arrive.

Today, our leaders are terrified of standing up to our city’s vocal minority of bored, shortsighted loudmouths who never stop crying Not In My Backyard (NIMBY).

It’s time San Francisco follow examples other cities are setting, especially New York.

Check out these quotes from the Times OpEd adapted for San Francisco:

Fixing a city’s “affordable-housing problem is both daunting and necessary.

The “ambitious answer is to ramp up supply over the next 10 years.”

“Adding [NYC’s goal of] 80,000 new [affordable housing units, many] of them [will be a part of] developments of greater height and density than many neighborhoods … have seen.”

“It’s a plan for big changes in the cityscape, and as it gathers force, it will meet resistance.”

“Nimbyism has its place — when the offending structures are illegal toxic-waste dumps or brothels. But with the housing need so dire in [San Francisco], a more farsighted and flexible approach to change is called for.”

“The city needs to grow, which means growing (literally) up. The way to get units built now, in quantity, for low- and middle-income families is by inducing the private market to supply it. And that means cutting deals with developers. The rich will get richer, but the poor will get apartments.”

“The ratio [of affordable units vs. market rate may] not be 50–50, as some are urging for East Harlem, but neither should it always default to 80–20.”

“If [San Francisco’s leaders earn] a reputation as an aggressively pro-growth — not just with more penthouses and lofts, but with a broader spectrum of housing, permanently affordable at the low end and in the middle — the Nimby criticisms will seem faint by comparison.”

100,000 units for Bloomberg. 200,000 units for de Blasio.

When I look at the leadership New York’s mayors have shown, I can’t understand why San Francisco has such a unambitious plan to add just 30,ooo new affordable units by 2020.

If San Francisco added 100,000 housing units, as New York’s previous mayor Michael Bloomberg did over 13 years, rents here would begin to come down, just as they did last year in Manhattan.

As the Times pointed out, “a more farsighted and flexible approach to change is called for.”

For that to happen, San Francisco needs a mayor and supervisors who are willing to develop bold vision and sell it to the public.

But that requires leadership, something Mayor Ed Lee is unlikely to deliver.