HOUSING AFFORDABILITY
Housing, public transit, accessible childcare and healthcare facilities…this is the infrastructure that makes a city thrive when it’s affordable. A progressive San Francisco is one that is planning for and investing in affordable neighborhoods.
San Francisco can and must invest in affordable housing as a public good and vital infrastructure. Investment means creative and significant public financing for a range of low-income, workforce and middle-income housing, developing public land for affordable housing and putting San Franciscans to work building it. It means returning to proven community planning with the “THR33 P’s of Housing: Protection, Preservation and Production”, expanding rent control and tenant protections, and acquiring and rehabbing affordable buildings (protecting and stabilizing the rent controlled housing we already have.)
Affordable neighborhoods aren’t just about housing, though. Community plans that built out the eastern neighborhoods all recognized that equitable development meant infrastructure that anticipated the needs of growing families and service workforce. Community planning helped identify the direct nexus between the increase in private development and the impact fees necessary to fund everything from libraries, transit and parks to neighborhood health clinics and childcare centers.
Making Upzoning Affordable Is A Political Choice
This month, the SF Board of Supervisors will vote to adopt a billionaire-supported plan to redevelop two-thirds of San Francisco. The Mayor and several Supervisors have framed this proposal as a “gun to the head” and the only way to prevent a “State takeover” where developers don’t have to offer any concessions to the City or submit to value recapture.
The reality is that those two options are not that dissimilar, especially when framed as a way to appease development interests looking to take advantage of the next tech boom market. It is a false choice. There is a third way, a plan that uses upzoning as a tool to build the affordable housing we need faster — without displacing residents.
