{"id":422569,"date":"2026-08-03T13:00:55","date_gmt":"2026-08-03T13:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/422569\/"},"modified":"2026-08-03T13:00:55","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T13:00:55","slug":"who-killed-housing-affordability-in-san-francisco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/422569\/","title":{"rendered":"Who killed housing affordability in San Francisco?\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

In late July, a San Francisco Chronicle reporter\u2019s photo<\/a> of a legion of older, white people attending a neighborhood meeting regarding the towering housing development<\/a> planned for the site of the Marina Safeway<\/a> became the latest touchstone for rancorous online debate about San Francisco development.\u00a0<\/p>\n

These old people, we were told by charming internet housing warriors, are the reason your monthly rent exceeds the asking price of a decent used Lexus. These obstinate old people are the reason you can\u2019t afford to live here.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Before we dissect this broad claim, it warrants mentioning that community meetings like the one depicted in the snapshot that launched a thousand quips are now merely a repository for performative outrage: Thanks to state law<\/a>, resident complaints can\u2019t really derail housing developments anymore. The online blowback? Reciprocal performative outrage.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But, to address the matter at hand, are greedy old people the reason you can\u2019t afford to live here? Your humble narrator talked to around a dozen developers, architects, development professionals and land-use experts and the consensus is: They might be a reason. But not the reason.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHousing costs,\u201d says one former longtime Planning Department official, \u201care the compounding of at least three separate policy failures: federal affordable housing defunding since the 1980s, exclusionary zoning with racist roots, and a permitting process that legislated NIMBYism.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cPicking one villain lets everyone else off the hook.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The online vitriol directed at a roomful of old people nonplussed at the idea of a housing development bearing no small resemblance to the stern of a Princess Cruise ship <\/a>largely came from young, pro-development, \u201ccommon sense\u201d moderates \u2014 YIMBYs, \u201cAbundance\u201d types, and others in the \u201cBuild, baby, build!\u201d arm of the Democratic Party.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Of note, Mayor Daniel Lurie and Supervisor Stephen Sherrill are both relatively young, ostensibly pro-development, \u201ccommon sense\u201d moderates. They also oppose the project<\/a> proposed atop Armistead Maupin\u2019s \u201cSocial Safeway\u201d site<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The invective should also, logically, extend to them.<\/p>\n

And not just them: Yes, San Francisco made it unduly burdensome to build here. Until last year, vast swaths of San Francisco were height-restricted to 40 feet<\/a>, with density controls that wouldn\u2019t realistically even let you go that high.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But this was, spoiler alert, a \u201cMurder on the Orient Express\u201d-type problem: Everyone was guilty here.<\/a> To single out older people on folding chairs and fail to indict a top-down, byzantine governmental building and permitting system makes for a hell of a hot take. But, again, it lets everyone else off the hook.<\/p>\n

Not that long ago, remembers one development professional, simply being assigned a city planner to go over elements of the California Environmental Quality Act on your project could require almost a year. That is: almost a year of waiting to get the person who would then determine if you would have to wait even longer while undertaking endless studies and mitigations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThat had nothing to do with old people,\u201d he laughs. \u201cGetting your building permits issued? It wasn\u2019t little old ladies slowing that down. That was corruption<\/a> that slowed that down.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe No. 1 impediment to building in San Francisco is the cost of land,\u201d he continues. \u201cNo. 2 is the cost of capital. Then it\u2019s the cost of materials and labor and then the time the government makes you take. I don\u2019t know that I\u2019d put cranky old neighbors in the top four or five.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yes, you can partially turn your ire on intransigent neighborhood people over the fact that, until recently, every permit in San Francisco was discretionary<\/a> and could be challenged. But it\u2019s harder to skewer neighborhood folks regarding the decades of scleroticism and corruption<\/a> within the building department, which benefitted connected fixers<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Agonizing hard costs, meanwhile, are the result of factors well beyond the municipal level: \u201cAll the copper and switchgear<\/a>,\u201d says a longtime city developer, \u201cit\u2019s all going to these fucking AI data centers.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Local builders are competing with everyone else here. And not just in hard costs: Private equity could put its money into housing or oil futures or frozen concentrated orange juice<\/a>. Developers tell me that a project generally needs to pencil out to 20 percent gross profit to attract equity investors. Doing the simple math, the developer continues, if it costs $600,000 to $700,000 per unit to develop, the necessary profit is $140,000.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So, that\u2019s a lot. And, in the present day, high interest rates have thrown off that equation. To spur development, the city has slashed<\/a> the percentage of affordable housing required in mid-sized to large developments from 15 percent to 5 percent<\/a> \u2014 but still very few are building. Labor and construction costs in San Francisco are high and, in the end, so are the rents and\/or purchase prices required of new construction.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople build based on maximum rent,\u201d says a longtime city developer. Most builders, he adds \u201cwill hold units vacant until they can get those rents. The only way to get more affordable housing is to finance it and subsidize it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Residential houses in the Sunset District on April 17, 2026. Photo by Zoe Malen<\/p>\n

Something YIMBYs get right: A theme that emerges again and again talking with land-use experts is that the city put itself in a bad place with downzonings in the 1970s.<\/p>\n

To buy into San Francisco, you presently need a pile of cash, a time machine or both. But if you\u00a0 could use that time machine to go back several generations and enable regional developers and mid-sized contractors to build the unremarkable 12-unit buildings that so many people desire to live in, it would\u2019ve made a difference today.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But how much more affordable would San Francisco be if we\u2019d built more? The answer, again, is more complicated than bros on Twitter would have you believe.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 2001<\/a>, the Planning Department commissioned a study tackling the question of what might happen to the cost of home ownership if, by some alchemy, 10 percent more units were dropped into the city overnight.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The answer: It would knock an estimated 4.1 percent off the price of buying a house. If you found this much money in a sack it would be like a gift from the leprechauns<\/a>. But, in terms of real-estate purchasing, it is not transformational: Let\u2019s say the median home sales price in San Francisco is $1.7 million<\/a>. This would lower that by around $70,000 \u2014\u00a0to $1.63 million.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That 2001 study, however, looked at more. It also estimated that if the city\u2019s per capita income were to jump by 10 percent, it would lead to a 7.5 percent increase in house prices.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth taking a moment to think about this because, while you\u2019d need to be a conjurer<\/a> to add 10 percent to the housing stock instantaneously, adding vast wealth to the city at a moment\u2019s notice is hardly the stuff of magic. Since 2001 it has happened again and again and again \u2014 and the cost of housing has gone to infinity and beyond. Rents in San Francisco last month were up 26 percent<\/a> from July 2025 \u2014\u00a0and they were already obscenely high in 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A tsunami of cash is about to wash over San Francisco, once more. And, here we come \u2018Lizbeth, it\u2019s The Big One<\/a>: The Anthropic and OpenAI IPOs<\/a> promise perhaps $2 trillion of tech stocks in the next year, much of which will be convertible into cash for young engineers to throw around like King Jaffe Joffer<\/a> and outbid anyone and everyone. This is an order of magnitude more than San Francisco, or any city, has ever dealt with.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If San Francisco had built more, it figures that this would have slowed down the rise in housing costs and helped us deal with the tech deluge. But the Planning Department\u2019s own study indicates that it would only have mitigated the surge in costs, not actually lowered them \u2014\u00a0let alone kept housing \u201caffordable.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sadly, we haven\u2019t built all that much, and even City Hall\u2019s best-laid plans won\u2019t help a great deal: The city controller estimated that, in the most optimistic scenario, Mayor Lurie\u2019s recent upzoning would usher in only 14,600 extra units over the next 20 years<\/a> \u2014 and decrease rents by a maximum of $125 a month. Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick but, again, not life-changing stuff.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the city\u2019s per-capita income has grown immensely.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Even if this city had an efficient and rational development process \u2014\u00a0which hasn\u2019t been the case for quite some time \u2014\u00a0it would have been vulnerable to a housing crisis. Tech and AI are not manufacturing or even biotech: By and large, you don\u2019t need warehouses or labs or factories and you\u2019re not bound by supply chains. One VC can have an epiphany and decide an app is the wave of the future and 2,000 well-compensated people can be expediently summoned to San Francisco.<\/p>\n

The problem of the massive and economically fortuitous Baby Boom generation holding the lion\u2019s share of the state\u2019s housing stock is one that is going to resolve in the coming years \u2014\u00a0gradually then suddenly. In the next decade, a tremendous amount of housing may yet come on the market. You all know why<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not talked about enough how beneficial it would be to open more quality senior housing in this state; most every older person who moved in would open up a home for younger people.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So, again, it\u2019s complicated. Meanwhile: Demonizing old people on the internet is fun and easy. Here\u2019s a hot take about that photo of the Marina meeting: There is nothing new under the sun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In late July, a San Francisco Chronicle reporter\u2019s photo of a legion of older, white people attending a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":422570,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-422569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422569","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=422569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422569\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/422570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=422569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=422569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=422569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}