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\u201cJohn stood for the simple idea that every human being has a place where they belong,\u201d TODCO said in an email to supporters. \u201cNot just in a stable home, but in a neighborhood with green parks, thriving small businesses, good schools, and vibrant arts and culture. A place that was welcoming and affordable\u00a0\u2014 a place rooted in community.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The ballot initiatives and lawsuits made him a frequent target of a wide range of political moderates and pro-business groups who argued that his old-school brand of activism made it harder and more costly to build housing in San Francisco, ultimately making the city more expensive and less welcoming.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He came under fire for using his nonprofit\u2019s money on political campaigns and for living for nearly 30 years in a TODCO-owned affordable unit that was supposed to be set aside for a property manager.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
But, despite the criticism, for a half century Elberling played an outsized role in shaping the South of Market. He sued to stop the rezoning of Central SoMa, eventually settling with the city after planners and developers agreed to set aside land for affordable housing and recreation space. He passed a measure that protected spaces used for artists and blue-collar jobs. He successfully fought to ensure that a merry-go-round and playground were included in the redevelopment of Yerba Buena.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey broke the mold with Elbo\u00a0\u2014 he was the last of the Mohicans,\u201d said former supervisor Aaron Peskin. \u201cHe was the conscience of Yerba Buena. He had enough institutional history to be able to remind everybody when they were breaking historical promises. He held them accountable.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"John\u00a0Elberling]()
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John\u00a0Elberling was known for his wit and his deep love for San Francisco.<\/p>\n
Liz Hafalia\/The Chronicle<\/p>\n
Former Chinatown Community Development Center director Gordon Chin called\u00a0Elberling \u201cmy favorite curmudgeon.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u201cJohn was always one of the smartest guys in the room which he constantly reminded us of,\u201d Chin said. \u201cI\u2019ll miss his wit, his love for San Francisco and his friendship.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Elberling was born and raised in Oakland where his family owned a commercial laundry business. He attended Catholic schools before going to boarding school in San Jose and to Boston College, where he dropped out after a year. He worked as a roadie for a rock band before returning to San Francisco in 1970, settling in the Inner Sunset and becoming part owner of a North Beach ice cream parlor.<\/p>\n
Around that time he got involved with neighborhood politics, working on a 1972 fight to keep Muni fares at 25 cents. By the late \u201970s he had joined forces with prominent slow-growth preservationists like Sue Hester and Calvin Welch. In 1978 he took over TODCO, which at the time was starting construction on the first of its senior housing buildings.<\/p>\n
Much of Elberling\u2019s power in the last decade came from his much-criticized decision to use money pulled from refinancing TODCO\u2019s real estate portfolio on politics. In 2016 Elberling took advantage of a law that allows owners of federally funded affordable housing buildings with Section 8 subsidies to \u201cre-syndicate\u201d their debt every 20 years, recapitalizing their portfolios by selling tax credits and tax-exempt bonds. Since then TODCO\u2019s advocacy subsidiary, the Yerba Buena Neighborhood Consortium, spent more than $3 million on pet ballot measures, lobbying and polling.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"John]()
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John Elberling, shown in 2020, was known for shepherding, or fighting, various ballot measures\u00a0relating to the city\u2019s growth.<\/p>\n
Liz Hafalia\/The Chronicle<\/p>\n
While\u00a0nonprofits can\u2019t give money to individual candidates, TODCO\u2019s newfound wealth has helped shift the city\u2019s political landscape by giving progressive campaigns enough money to compete against more moderate housing-related initiatives, which tend to have the support of trade unions, business groups and large real estate developers<\/p>\n
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Those funds became the main source of funding for progressive ballot measures, but critics argued the money should have been spent on building improvements and residents services. In 2023 then Supervisor Catherine\u00a0Stefani accused TODCO and Elberling of \u201cprofiting from the taxpayer and public subsidies at the expense of the city\u2019s most vulnerable.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Elberling was unrepentant in the face of criticism.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are unhappy because we do a million bucks and they don\u2019t do anything,\u201d he told the Chronicle in 2021. \u201cF\u2014 \u2019em. And tell them we are thinking about doing more next year.\u201d<\/p>\n
While TODCO is technically a neighborhood-based affordable housing group, it stopped building in the early 2000s. Elberling said he stopped pursuing development opportunities after clashing with former Mayor Willie Brown over several ballot measures and a political dustup led to TODCO losing out on a project.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter that I thought, \u2018Well, if we want to be housing developers, then we can\u2019t be advocates,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s one or the other.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Elberling also came under fire for choosing to live rent-free in a 400-square-foot resident manager\u2019s unit in a TODCO building on Folsom Street, despite the fact that his salary\u00a0\u2014 about $200,000 a year\u00a0\u2014 was four times the income he would need to qualify for the building. Affordable housing laws allow a live-in building manager who is exempt from income requirements.<\/p>\n
![\"John\u00a0Elberling]()
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John\u00a0Elberling was raised in Oakland before briefly attending college in Boston and returning to the Bay Area.<\/p>\n
Santiago Mejia\/The Chronicle<\/p>\n
Elberling made no apologies for living in the free apartment, saying that the unit he lives in was empty before he moved in 1986. He shared the studio with cats named Queen Shorty, Princess Squeaky and Hunk of Burning Love.<\/p>\n
Mission Housing Executive Director Sam Moss, a frequent Elberling critic, said \u201cthough we rarely agreed on how to best be stewards for San Francisco\u2019s affordable housing, I know he cared deeply for his community and that\u2019s always something to be respected.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Elberling had long been a favorite punching bag of the YIMBY leaders, in 2021 he received national attention when he successfully lobbied the Board of Supervisors to reject<\/a> a project that would have converted a valet parking lot into a 495-unit tower off Market Street. The vote prompted the California Department of Housing and Community Development to launch an unprecedented \u201cHousing Policy Review\u201d of San Francisco, citing the Stevenson vote as evidence of \u201ctendentious\u201d local obstruction.<\/p>\nAs Elberling\u2019s health failed the TODCO board of directors named Eric Tao as acting CEO. Tao is an experienced San Francisco developer who has built about 1,200 units of mostly market rate housing. While he said he shares Elberling\u2019s values and love of San Francisco, Tao said the bare-knuckled political style that TODCO practiced was likely a thing of the past.<\/p>\n
\u201cJohn\u2019s thing was always \u2018how do you preserve the soul of the city,\u2019\u201d Tao said. \u201cA place for blue-collar workers, the neighborhoods, a place for all income levels.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sunny Angulo, a longtime city hall aide and progressive leader, said today\u2019s nonprofits \u201care so dependent on City Hall for funding that it makes it hard for folks to speak up\u201d like Elberling always did.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere will never be another Elbo or someone who built something up with his bare hands\u00a0\u2014 an entire neighborhood and community infrastructure\u00a0\u2014 and remained such a force for so many generations,\u201d\u00a0Angulo said. \u201cWho are the leaders left? Who will be the voice that isn\u2019t afraid of a fight?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"John\u00a0Elberling, longtime\u00a0president of Tenants and Owners Development Corp., known as TODCO, has died. Santiago Mejia\/The Chronicle John\u00a0Elberling, a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":248788,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[7,1335,1011,10374,101,103,102,104,106,105,1911],"class_list":{"0":"post-248787","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-development","10":"tag-housing","11":"tag-obituary","12":"tag-san-francisco","13":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","14":"tag-san-francisco-news","15":"tag-sf","16":"tag-sf-headlines","17":"tag-sf-news","18":"tag-soma"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248787\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/248788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}