The Greenberg Brief: When Building Leads to Destroying

We’ve heard that the cure to San Francisco’s ails like homelessness, record high costs to buy or rent a home, will be magically cured by unleashing massive building efforts, building in every neighborhood across the City. Whether we like it or not. Whether it upends the character of a neighborhood or not.

The more one digs into this issue, the truth is borne out: developers will be enriched, neighborhood character ruined, drug-addicted homeless would not inhabit an indoor space for long before damaging it, and there’s the insane per-unit cost to build in San Francisco. The most cost-effective and therefore profitable units built will be for single persons. Anti-car activists seek the further curtailing of car ownership through much of the approved building plans lacking parking spaces. The city lacks an adequate (and safe) transportation system to move any substantial new population across town, as well as a lack of sewer, water, garbage and waste processing capabilities. There is so much more.

How many housing units are mandated? 82,000. By 2031, seven years from now.

Under California State legislation passed the last few years, along with a newly-enacted law which streamlines the building process just taking effect this past January, eighty-two thousand housing units are mandated be built here in the city of San Francisco. This could result in nearly two hundred thousand new residents, or more.

Yet we have a population of eight hundred thousand. In other words, the expectation is to build housing for a ten to twenty percent increase in residents. We are far from meeting this goal. Essentially, work hasn’t even started. We don’t have the infrastructure to serve this massive surge of residents either.

The mandate is clearly unreasonable, causing hysterics among city hall officials. The concept is highly divisive with residents as well. If you are one who advocates (ie. screams at the top of your lungs) at others that we must build at any cost, even bulldozing neighborhoods and then labels single-family homes “racist”, you’re a YIMBY (Yes In My Back Yard). You advocate for unlimited, mass social housing projects.

The NIMBY, on the other hand, is characterized as the intolerant grumpy conservative, (Not In My Back Yard), with shaking your fist in the air shouting “Get off my lawn.” Closed-minded, old school, a Nimby wants their neighborhood to retain its character, its safety, good schools, and  often, a suburban feel. And Nimby’s often own their home, whether it be a condo or house with a lovely yard.

So, why eighty-two thousand units? Where can they be built when San Francisco has no land to expand into? It’s already the second most-dense city in America. And what are the consequences of failing to meet the already far-behind timeline?

YIMBY advocates continually assert we can end our homelessness crises by building sufficient homes to house those living on the streets. They push for passage of local pro-building-related ordinances, removing restrictions on zoning, environmental review, all to lower barriers to building. But to many locals I’ve talked with (NIMBYs), they lament loss of quiet suburban feeling, a lack of existing infrastructure, and a key question: why should taxpayers be burdened with funding the costs of construction (if the city is contracting for new buildings) for any drug addict who wants a home, especially when such new housing unit could cost over a million dollars to build? And how about controls to prevent new drug-tourist arrivals to San Francisco demanding being given new digs to crash? A compelling argument indeed.

Candidates for local office are heading to this November’s all-important elections. Most are pro-building and parrot the need to get serious about the 2031 deadline to meet California state’s mandate. A few candidates are less bullish and assert building should occur only in areas of San Francisco where appropriate. Mayoral candidates are mostly pro-mandate, including incumbent London Breed. She continually asserts the homeless can be cleared off the streets if only we built more housing. I say we need temporary shelters for them, not give them a million-dollar home. Then we triage and send the drug tourist tent dwellers back to their town where they came here from. That program already exists actually, called Homeward Bound, and we need this to be the default response.

Yet what do we have to lose if 2031 rolls around and the housing isn’t built? The doomsday-sayers, those advocates, city officials and candidates for elected office all screaming that we will be in deep trouble if we fail to act. Money, that’s the penalty. California will apparently withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in state funding to San Francisco earmarked for housing, for transportation. Could the city overcome a loss of funds?

The assertion that we residents of San Francisco, who already pay tremendous property taxes either directly through home ownership or via rent paid to landlords, want neighborhood upheaval under the false premise that mass building will equate with affordable housing and curing the pervasive drug addiction and homelessness is absurd. As more locals come to the realization the YIMBY movement is anarchistic and destructive in nature, pushback is becoming louder: the state mandate is abusive and actually outdated.

The calculation of eighty-two thousand units is arbitrary and pre-pandemic thinking. Getting a handle on San Francisco’s crime, insane annual operating budget, terrible schools, and collapsed retail sector is paramount today. If failing to meet the mandate means loss of state funding, so be it. Our city’s budget is greatly in need of a serious overhaul anyway – and the budget currently at $16 Billion should actually be half what is spent annually. We could absorb a state-funding cut by reduction in needless, duplicative and unaccounted payouts to nonprofits. Now is not the time for destructive tearing down our town.