I woke up Saturday morning to learn that once again the US is at war. This time, Trump, aided by Israel, is attacking Iran, which makes so little sense it’s hard to imagine that is anything other than a very deadly distraction to shift the news narrative away from the Epstein files.
That’s a terrible thought, of course. In this administration, it’s also entirely possible, which is terrifying.
I am far from an expert on the Middle East, so at times like these I turn to my USF colleague, Prof. Stephen Zunes, who is one of the world’s experts on US policy in the region.
In this TV interview, he points out that Trump had no logical reason to start this war: A mediator from Oman just the day before the bombing started said the two countries were making good progress on a nuclear deal. The message instead: “The US can’t be trusted.”
To suggest that this will lead to regime change is “naive,” Zunes says: The Revolutionary Guards have as much control of the country as the official supreme leader, and eliminating a few more top Iranians won’t matter much.
The way could easily escalate and spread. The outcome: “This is just going to end up killing a lot of people.”
Zunes is not a fan of the Iranian regime, which he calls “criminal.” More than 3,000 people have died just in the past month as the brutal, oppressive government has cracked down on protests.
Still, Zunes sent me a piece that Truthout is running tomorrow; among his points:
It is very unlikely this effort will succeed, however. From the outset, Trump has treated Iran like some kind of tiny banana republic of yesteryear to which the United States could essentially dictate policies under threat of overthrowing the government. Iran, by contrast, is a relatively developed and well-educated nation of over 90 million people which has been a major regional power for much of the past 2500 years.
Washington’s big mistake in Vietnam was seeing the conflict as part of an advancing global totalitarian threat that needed to be met by massive military support. In reality, the National Liberation Front (a.k.a. the “Viet Cong”), while Communist led, was first and foremost a nationalist movement, which was why the more the U.S. bombed and the more combat troops were sent, the greater the resistance. Similarly, the United States, by focusing on the Islamist orientation of the regime, is grossly underestimating its staying power as a nationalist government.
As a result, this overtly imperialist effort, like most attempts of hegemonic overreach by Western powers, will have devastating consequences and is almost certain to fail.
In the past, Zunes says, US bombing campaigns have undermined democracy movements, and this may set back any efforts by the majority of the Iranian people who dislike the current government: “It’s hard to kick out their evil regime when bombs are falling on them.”
Sup. Chyanne Chen has sent a letter to the Planning Commission pointing out something that’s been obvious to anyone paying attention to the housing crisis—but entirely ignored in the debate over upzoning:
San Francisco has a state mandate not just to allow more luxury housing, but to provide 47,000 units of affordable housing by 2031—and nobody in the Mayor’s Office, the Board of Supervisors, or the state Legislature has any idea where the funding will come from.
The city has reduced the required percentage of affordable units for luxury projects to less than 15 percent. At that rate, developers would have to build more than 300,000 market-rate units in five years to keep up with the affordable requirement.
State Sen. Scott Wiener’s legislation mandating more density and eliminating local review of large housing development comes with zero state money for affordable housing.
In the lengthy debate at the Board of Supes over Mayor Daniel Lurie’s Rich Family Zoning Plan, nobody from the Mayor’s Office mentioned the 47,000 unit mandate or how the city might fund it.
Chen notes that the city’s own Housing Element, adopted in 2022, calls for the same level of affordable housing—and has been utterly, entirely ignored:
The 2022 update to the Housing Element, adopted unanimously by the Board of Supervisors, includes over 216 policy actions that aim to advance equity strategies, affordability and anti displacement tools, and public investments. These actions are critical to enable San Francisco to make meaningful progress towards producing the 46,598 Below Market Rate units required by 2031 under the City’s Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA) obligations.
I am disappointed to see that implementation of these equity-oriented policy actions has been incomplete, opaque, and often delayed. The City’s investment in affordable housing has been stalled, with the majority of affordable housing dollars already committed to pipeline projects or exhausted, with no new sustained or one-time funding commitments in the works. In addition, a cumulative reduction in inclusionary housing requirements and impact fees has further curtailed efforts to generate new affordable housing.
More:
Even though development of Above Moderate Income housing has been slow to take hold due to high interest rates and construction costs, our city’s obligation to meet the Below Market Rate housing units in the RHNA remains. In the previous RHNA cycle, the opposite was true, where the city over-produced above moderate income housing by a two-fold factor, while significantly under-producing affordable units. Meeting the affordability needs at Below Market Rate levels is not contingent on our progress in meeting Above Moderate Income development.
I urge the Commission to conduct an analysis of our progress towards meeting Policy Action
8.1.10 and to identify the follow up actions needed to comply as soon as possible:
Increase of additional City funding for affordable housing
Pursuit of additional State funding for affordable housing
Increase the land banking strategy to accommodate 50 percent more affordable housing units than the capacity of the sites acquired from 2022 through 2025
Wiener and some of his Yimby allies say that cutting “red tape,” in essence deregulating housing, will eventually bring down prices. That’s dubious a best—but the Wiener approach almost certainly won’t bring prices down to the affordability level that the city is mandated to create.
So: The element of state law that says luxury developers can do anything they want, and neighbors have no say in what happens to their communities, is fully in effect. It’s happening all over the city.
The element of the same law that says San Francisco needs to build adequate affordable housing is totally ignored.
Meanwhile: Strada Investment Group is proposing a 23-story, 619-unit building on Port land, right on the waterfront. The project would directly contradict the will of the voters who have set tight limits on waterfront heights. It will do little for the affordability crisis: These will be ultra-luxury units, with only a small percentage affordable.
But that may not matter: State law has eviscerated the ability of cities to protect even waterfront land from overdevelopment.
Residents of the Marina are unhappy about the giant Safeway project. People in West Portal aren’t thrilled about seeing an old theater replaced with a nine-story building. The protests will continue if the economy changes and interest rates come down and more developers build bigger and taller luxury housing in the neighborhoods.
Missing from all these stories: Sen. Wiener.
I don’t think most of San Francisco realizes yet that the state pre-emption over local control, even on the waterfront, is to a great extent, the result of Wiener’s legislation. He has been the leader in Sacramento on bills that take away the ability of cities to manage their own land use—and the result could be dramatic. Miami Beach by the Bay is, maybe, on its way, and there’s nothing the San Francisco voters can do about it.
But they can understand, if they don’t like what’s happening, that the person responsible is now running for Congress.
Supervisor Jackie Fielder is introducing legislation this week that would slightly increase taxes on credit card companies, sales financing, wealth investment funds, and other financial sector companies to fund a public bank.
The measure, which would go before the voters in November, would bring in about $400 million over nine years, which would be enough to capitalize the bank.
The revenue, Fielder told me, would be “seed funding” for the bank, which would start off small but eventually would be able to take deposits and operate as a full-service financial institution.
It would, among other things, be able to finance affordable housing, which is a critical need: The main obstacle to social housing in San Francisco is not Nimbys or red tape or regulations; it’s money.
