A City for All of Us, In Three Stories
One building foretells the future of San Francisco
What should San Francisco do with 730 Stanyan St.? The property used to be a McDonald’s on the border of the Cole Valley and Haight-Ashbury neighborhoods. Now it’s an empty lot. It will unquestionably become housing. But how much housing?
The debate has been contentious. On one side, the Cole Valley Improvement Association (CVIA) and Haight-Ashbury Neighborhood Council (HANC) want the new building to be just four or five stories high. By contrast, Yes In My Back Yard (YIMBY) and Haight-Ashbury Neighbors for Density (HAND) want seven stories. Of course, one new building will not radically change our city but a difference of three stories will create a powerful precedent for how we confront our housing crisis.
At a recent community meeting, CVIA and HANC said the additional three stories would threaten the “neighborhood’s character.” In response, YIMBY-founder Laura Clark criticized housing opponents as “wealthy, well-connected, busybodies” — criticism that a CVIA newsletter dismissed out of hand. While it might sound harsh, Clark’s point is worth considering so I’ll try to elaborate:
- Wealthy. If you settled here a while ago and own your home with Prop. 13 tax protections or rent your home with rent control, then you are paying tens of thousands of dollars less each year than those of us paying the market rate. Moreover, home owners have accrued wealth from skyrocketing real estate prices. You’re getting this “wealth” because you were fortunate to get here earlier. There’s nothing wrong with your wealth but please understand that many of your neighbors (like me!) aren’t so fortunate or wealthy. The difference between us in housing costs is equivalent to buying a new car every year. It sucks.
- Well-connected. Neighborhood associations matter to City supervisors who make decisions. You influence what happens in our community.
- Busybodies. This is the most contentious and most important. Your housing costs are low and comfortable. Nobody is in your business trying to take that away. However, by opposing three more stories of housing, you are increasing the market rate for the rest of us. Of course, people who “got here first” gain an advantage, but it needs to be reasonable. For those of us who arrived in the last few years, members of CVIA and HANC are in our business, making our housing unaffordable, and it’s unfair.
Here are the facts. In the past few years San Francisco has created 154,000 jobs but just 25,660 homes. This has created a divide of winners and losers: people who are comfortable and people who can barely afford to live here. Designating affordable housing isn’t enough: Last year, 85,000 households applied for just 1,210 units. Just to qualify, a three-person family needed to be below the income threshold of $103,750 a year. For every household that won the housing lottery, there were 70 families that couldn’t afford to live in our city. That sucks.
Those numbers play out in our capitalist society, where the laws of supply and demand prevail. The market rate for a one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco is $3,400 a month and buying a home costs more than $1 million or $5,000 a month in mortgage costs. If you look at those numbers and realize that you couldn’t afford to move here now, then you’re fortunate. But if you oppose building more housing to relieve pressure on those of us who aren’t so fortunate, then you’re being cruel.
San Francisco’s housing deficit is stratifying our city into three groups: (1) people rich enough to pay market price, (2) people lucky enough to win the housing lottery, and (3) people fortunate enough to arrive here a while ago. I love San Francisco because it’s a diverse, inclusive community that welcomes all types of people. Our housing crisis threatens that fundamental essence of our city. Do we really want to limit this city to just the very rich, the very poor, and the very fortunate? What will San Francisco be like without everyone in between—the teachers, the artists, all the people it takes to make San Francisco a thriving, exciting place to live. At what point did “neighborhood character” become defined more by the height of a building and less by the people living inside?
There is no physical limitation preventing taller buildings, it’s only San Francisco’s regulations that set the maximum allowable building height to 40 feet throughout most of the city. This artificially constrains the supply of housing. Increasing that limit is our best tool for fixing the housing crisis.
A Cuban friend once told me that “in capitalism the richest person picks first, the second richest picks second and so on until the poor get whatever is left over — which is often nothing.” The neighborhoods of Haight-Ashbury and Cole Valley are a 20-minute commute to some of the highest paying jobs in the world so, as long as technology is driving our economy, there will be someone rich enough to pay market price. If we want diversity, then we need to build as much housing as possible, starting with seven stories at 730 Stanyan St.
We can’t control our economy any more than we can control our weather, but we can control our building heights. I hope that HANC and CVIA’s opposition to three more stories at 730 Stanyan St. came from lack of understanding and not lack of empathy. I hope they will focus their efforts on the exterior design and aesthetics of the new building so that it maintains the look and feel of the neighborhood while providing the maximum amount of housing.
Here’s to a San Francisco that we can all afford to live in.
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Hat tip: Thanks so much for feedback Brian Warmoth, Will “Sharkis” Barkis, and Darren Sabo.
