SF Housing Justice Coalition Pens Letter to the State

Sacramento-led initiatives are giving affordable housing activists pause. (W K)

As San Francisco’s homelessness issue continues in full-force, documented by none other than Andrew Callahan’s Channel 5 News in fall 2023, the city continues to try to catch up to state-mandated construction goals. In December a possible break came when supervisors agreed to a mayor-led plan to reduce red tape for developers. But that initiative, plus others in the last few months, have given many affordable housing enthusiasts pause.

Rather than harbor their concern, a group of more than 90 organizations and housing activists wrote a letter to to the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD). On November 17, 2023, three main groups released the letter; The authors include the San Francisco Council of Community Housing Organizations (CCHO), the San Francisco Anti Displacement Coalition (SFADC), and the Race & Equity in all Planning Coalition — San Francisco (REP-SF), each of which contains numerous organizations beneath their banner. In short, the letter takes issue with the HDC’s “San Francisco Housing Policy and Practice Review” (PPR) released on October 25.

The letter says the PPR undermines too much of the oversight in place to ensure new buildings and policies don’t destroy affordable housing that does exist in the city. For instance the letter says the PPR assigns blame to the city for high interest rates and developer costs rather than acknowledging a spike in interest for affordable units; The authors point out Mission Rock development’s 102 below market rate units, released for lottery in June 2023, received 2,900 applicants according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The 16-page letter, including recommended addendums to the initial report from the HDC, covers a variety of implementable ways to Affirmatively Further Fair Housing, shorthand for ensuring the federal fair housing policies as of February 2023. “Our coalitions agree that the project review and approval process can and should be shortened significantly,” the letter reads, “but public participation must be retained in order to curb the harmful impacts of displacement.”

San Franciscan housing activists shared their concern directly to state-level administrators. (Fernando Hernandez)

The coming months will be important in regards to how the PPR impacts the city’s planning and updating of housing policy.  Advocates for fair housing share in the letter their concern that after red tape reduction the city will upzone construction projects too greatly, leading to a possible boom in realtor speculation. The “right to return” — meaning displaced tenants having the chance to live in updated or newly built property after their housing is dismantled for development — is on some housing activists’ radars, as housing rights activist and organizer Jacque Patton points out there’s an unglamorous history of displaced tenants never returning to their original dwellings. “I’m not against building housing if it makes the city more affordable,” Patton says. “I’m against housing that’s too expensive.”

The PPR as it stands promotes these kinds of rebuilds, one of the reasons the letter asks for what it calls “corrections” to the report, a contention Patton shares. She says state-backed policies as they stand encourage the destruction of rent-controlled units so long as more are built in their stead, but she points out that there’s no stipulation on how quickly that has to take place. She’s represented three clients whose housing was burnt down, for instance, and they never returned to those locations — though they did win money in recompense.

The groups are not the only concerned with where the city’s need to build is headed. Supervisors Aaron Peskin and Connie Chan are pushing back on Sacramento-backed goals for San Francisco, pioneered in part by Senator Scott Wiener. Current legislation, like that recommended by the HDC, would penalize the city of San Francisco for developers lack of construction. Current legislation could strip away essential services if goals are not met — but San Francisco politicians can’t force builders to build. “70,000 units of housing are approved and ready to be built,” reads a letter written by Peskin and Chan. “Developers have chosen not to build. Yet the City is being penalized by allowing these same developers to essentially have peremptory powers over regular local processes.”

An image designed by the San Francisco Anti-Displacement Coalition.