Watching today’s Planning Commission hearing on neighborhood upzoning was like watching people living in two different worlds.
The hearing went on for more than five hours, and almost everyone agreed that San Francisco needs more housing for working-class people and families, that the rent is too damn high, and that it’s almost impossible for anyone other than the rich to buy a home.
Speaker after speaker associated with the Yimby agenda talked about the problem. Young people said they can’t imagine an affordable future; older people said they can’t imagine how their kids are going to be able to stay in this city. They are right.
Groups association with the Race and Equity in Planning Coalition talked about displacement of low-income people and communities of color. They are right.
Most of the more than 100 speakers were sincere about solving the crisis. They all seem to care about the city, and want it to be a better place.
But one group is living in a world where the free market can be trusted to solve the problem, where more housing supply will end up reducing prices. The others are living in a world defined by the realities of late-stage neoliberal capitalism, where more supply of market-rate housing is never going to bring down costs, and may destroy existing vulnerable communities.
The focus on the zoning map, and which parts of the city will face higher density, is really missing the point. As Calvin Welch, who has worked on affordable housing issues for more than half a century, noted, if density solved affordability, San Francisco and Manhattan would have the cheapest housing in the country. He also noted that more than 70 percent of the housing built in US cities today is built by ten giant developers.
If density solved affordability, then Vancouver, BC would be the most affordable city in North America; instead, it’s the most expensive city.
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So the real debate here isn’t and can’t be about how tall the next generation of buildings can be along transit corridors on the West Side of town.
It’s about whether we believe that allowing developers to build tens of thousands of new units will ever bring prices down.
And it’s about what the impact of that new development would have on existing residents and small businesses.
One speaker, Virginia Barker, noted that the Planning Department didn’t take into account “the economic and political context” of 2025—which is very different from what we saw 20 or 30 years ago.
The real estate industry, she said, is dominated today by private equity, “which is like strip mining.” Private equity firms look for ways to exploit markets for short-term profits; they aren’t a bit interested in “mixed middle” housing development or affordability.
Lori Brooke, a founder of Neighborhoods United San Francisco, said she’s sympathetic to the Yimby folks who just want new housing to meet the needs of families. “All of the other speakers don’t realize that what will be built tomorrow is not what they can afford,” Brooke said.
Dyan Ruiz, working with the REP coalition, said that “the real estate model relies on making housing more expensive.” Between 1950 and 2013, Ruiz said, San Francisco has seen two new units of housing built for every new resident; prices have only gone up.
That, a new study shows, is because “constraints” on new housing don’t explain higher prices; the increased median income of people living in and moving to the city—that is, gentrification—is a much better predictor.
And upzoning will increase the value of existing property—making it more expensive for affordable housing developers to buy land.
San Francisco is under a state mandate to allow some 80,000 new housing units by 2031. That’s far more than developers could possibly build in that time frame, even if San Francisco had no zoning at all.
More than 40,000 of those units are supposed to be affordable, which comes with a price tag of $19 billion. Nowhere in any of the state bills mandating upzoning is any money for that housing.
But let’s say the Federal Reserve cuts interest rates, and developers, who are not building anything right now, can get financing for much denser buildings on, say, Geary or Clement. “Entire business districts will be bulldozed,” one speaker said. And while the likes of Joel Engardio talk about how nice it would be if this city was more like Paris, “new towers won’t be charming like Paris. We haven’t built any charming architecture since the 1930s.”
Some of the Yimby leaders don’t care about that; they just want more housing, no matter what it looks like and no matter what has to be bulldozed in the process. If that would lead to dramatic drops in housing prices, we could have a debate about preservation. I see no evidence that, in 2025, demolition and new construction will bring down costs.
Ruiz said that “you don’t upzone unless you plan to demolish what’s there.” That’s not just architecture (there are plenty of low-rise buildings in some parts of the city that have little historic value). It’s about the existing tenants and small businesses that will be displaced by demolition.
The rent-controlled tenants have the legal right to return, which will likely not happen. But the small businesses have no rights at all.
Some speakers talked about how more density would bring more people into commercial corridors, which would be good for small businesses. True enough—if those businesses can survive demolition and displacement.
AnaChristina Arana, who also works with REP, said the new rules would not encourage family housing. Because of the way the market works, she said, “this will encourage the production of overpriced studios.”
Putting more small units on a lot makes more money for developers—and that’s really the whole point.
The commissioners debated a lot of the finer points of the zoning laws. Some talked about “pedestrian friendly cities.” They talked about “transit corridors.” They talked about “clarity in process.”
Commissioner Kathrin Moore talked about expanding residential rent control, commercial rent control, and protection of small businesess. Those are essential parts of any new planning initiatives.
But many of the commissioners missed the real issue.
In 2025, in a world where private equity dominates real estate, where developers seek maximum short-term profits, will more housing ever lower prices to the level that working-class people and families in the city can afford?
If the answer is no, then this is all a potential disaster with no, well, upside.
