By Tim Redmond
There are two interesting articles in the latest Urbanist, a magazine published by the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association – and taken together, they make an excellent case that the free market will never solve San Francisco’s housing crisis.
Both pieces run without bylines, but Gabriel Metcalf, the director of SPUR, told me he wrote them, and they represent the organization’s official position.
The first, called “How to make San Francisco affordable again,” includes a lot of things that all of us agree on, starting with the need to preserve existing rent-controlled housing. (I’m now counting on SPUR, which tends to be a bit more conservative than me on economic issues, to support both the Campos anti-eviction bill and an anti-speculation tax) and doubling the amount of subsidized affordable housing. That part could have been adopted at the tenants convention (showing how desperate even business leaders are for affordable housing.)
Then comes the part where I always argue with SPUR: (more after the jump)
