Who\u2019s better on housing, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie or (socialist) New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani?\u00a0<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the question that Laura Foote, executive director of YIMBY Action, and Ryder Kessler, co-founder of Abundance New York, set out to answer in an hour-long discussion on Substack Live this morning moderated by writer Scott Alan Lucas.\u00a0<\/p>\n
There was a clear answer: Kessler in New York gave his mayor an A-, and Foote in San Francisco said hers was only deserving of a B-, or maybe even a C+.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s holding back,\u201d Foote said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
To be fair, she said, the city has made some good pro-housing moves under Lurie: He helped pass San Francisco\u2019s first major upzoning<\/a> in the city\u2019s west and north in decades, and also recently helped lower the rate<\/a> of affordable units required in new housing projects from 15 percent to 5 percent.\u00a0<\/p>\n But, she said, the city is still fighting the YIMBYs. \u201cI\u2019m now on my second lawsuit against the city of San Francisco,\u201d Foote said.\u00a0<\/p>\n One of those lawsuits was against last year\u2019s upzoning plan to allow taller buildings<\/a>, which YIMBY Action felt did not go far enough<\/a> \u2014 the organization accused San Francisco of violating the state law that had required it to upzone in the first place by not increasing heights as much as it should have.\u00a0<\/p>\n The second lawsuit, filed this month, was similar: It alleged the city was not in compliance<\/a> with SB 79, a state law requiring that apartment buildings be allowed near public transit.\u00a0<\/p>\n On top of that, Lurie has also opposed the Marina Safeway<\/a> project, a proposed 22-story development on the waterfront in a wealthy neighborhood.<\/p>\n \u201cI think that we have a catastrophe on our hands and need to have solutions at scale with that,\u201d Foote said, adding that she would prefer a maximalist approach.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI wanted him to be the YIMBY hero,\u201d she said. But instead, she said, \u201cIt\u2019s been a couple years of slowly festering irritation.\u201d<\/p>\n Charles Lutvak, Lurie\u2019s spokesperson, defended Lurie\u2019s approach. \u201cMayor Lurie passed the city\u2019s first major rezoning since we downzoned half a century ago and partnered with Supervisor Melgar on a transformational investment in affordable housing<\/a> that will be on the ballot this fall,\u201d he said. \u201cWe have more work to do to turn reforms into homes, but our administration has consistently taken real action to build new homes so families can live and thrive in San Francisco.\u201d<\/p>\n In New York City, though, YIMBYs have reported the opposite experience: Though he\u2019s only been in office for seven months, Mamdani has vastly exceeded their expectations.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cHe is doing so many things that are from our wish list and from our agenda,\u201d Kessler said. He pointed to environmental reform efforts that were pushed through the state legislature<\/a> with support from Mamdani this spring. <\/p>\n Plus, Mamdani has put YIMBYs on his housing team and his housing plan didn\u2019t just call for 200,000 units of affordable housing, it also called for<\/a> hundreds of thousands of market-rate ones.\u00a0<\/p>\n Kessler said he has \u201cangst\u201d about the fact that Mamdani has \u201cfrozen the rent<\/a>,\u201d something that many YIMBYs believe will push up prices for non-rent-controlled units. But, Kessler said, \u201cthe fact that he\u2019s delivering very legible wins gives him political capital and space to pursue the medium and longer term things,\u201d policies that have so far been closely aligned with what YIMBYs want.\u00a0<\/p>\n Kessler pointed out that, unlike in California, where new state laws have defanged neighborhood opposition to housing, few YIMBY reforms have happened at the state level in New York.\u00a0<\/p>\n But, he said, the biggest sea change was having \u201ca mayor, especially a socialist\u201d like Mamdani acknowledge that the biggest issue he had changed his mind on was \u201cthe role of market-rate housing development.\u201d Mamdani, he added, has been key in \u201credirecting the organized left towards YIMBYism.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s something that has not happened in San Francisco \u2014 at least not yet. Most progressives in the city are so skeptical of market-rate housing, it is a de facto litmus test for progressive bona fides. They typically only support housing projects that are subsidized for middle- and low-income households.\u00a0<\/p>\n Foote attributed this to the fact that progressive coalition in San Francisco has been closely allied with neighborhood groups who value community input \u2014 even if that input is NIMBY opposition to new housing development, she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThere is a disrupter energy in the progressive party, but it\u2019s been married in San Francisco to a thoughtful, careful, tap-the-brakes community thing,\u201d Foote said.\u00a0<\/p>\n YIMBYism here has instead been embraced by politicians that are a part of the moderate coalition in San Francisco, such as state Sen. Scott Wiener. Though that could change: Ex-staffers of leftist Saikat Chakrabarti, who unsuccessfully ran<\/a> to replace Nancy Pelosi, have spun up<\/a> a new club they describe as \u201ca progressive YIMBY club.\u201d<\/p>\n Foote said the YIMBY-moderate alliance in San Francisco is not necessarily a natural fit: The pro-cop, pro-business downtown politicos have not always been pro-housing, which may explain why Lurie has not fully embraced YIMBYism, she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cTurns out rich guys are not as comfortable with disruption,\u201d she added.\u00a0<\/p>\n She hopes that at some point, the perception of YIMBYism as a moderate-leaning ideology will break down and YIMBYism will be embraced across the political spectrum in San Francisco.\u00a0<\/p>\n It appears to be working in New York. \u201cI think our organization has been part of this as really beating the drum that this is a cross-cutting axis, not a point on the spectrum,\u201d Kessler said. \u201cOur community can have DSA members and Manhattan Institute fellows all alongside each other.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Who\u2019s better on housing, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie or (socialist) New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani?\u00a0 That\u2019s the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":433293,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[636,1011,101,103,102,104,106,105,23681],"class_list":["post-433292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-daniel-lurie","tag-housing","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news","tag-yimby"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433292","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=433292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433292\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/433293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}