At a recent community meeting inside of Mercury Cafe, a classic coffee shop on the car-swamped road of Octavia in the Western Addition neighborhood of Hayes Valley, a supervisor committed a major faux pas.
District 5, once governed by a democratic socialist, had a heated race in 2024 that ended with a GrowSF-backed candidate named Bilal Mahmood. The Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association invited him to speak about pressing community issues more than a month ago. But on the night of the event, September 24th, the supervisor spent twenty or so minutes and then departed. He was off to Galavant, he explained in his own, different words, with our dear influencer slash billionaire mayor.
During his very brief time with the menagerie of Hayes Valley neighbors, Supervisor Mahmood suggested that it will make it easier for developers to build if they don’t have to include affordable units in their towers. Instead, they could pay into a (presumably) city-managed fund that would build exclusively affordable housing. But while the audience, many of whom were just arriving and settling into their seats, began processing this rapid fire “I’m talking At You, Not With You” communique, the Supervisor was checking the time and inching visibly toward the door.
The politicians, it seems, have lost the plot on housing.
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It’s clear that some supervisors are at the beck and call of the Mayor, as is tradition. The other meeting Supervisor Mahmood was heading to was closer to the Western Addition neighborhood of the Fillmore. That meeting, too, was crowded; there weren’t even enough seats for some of the elderly folks. There, the mayor was showcasing his Big Beautiful Zoning Plan. He’s said publicly that he expects it to pass.
Most San Franciscans haven’t even heard of it. Zoning has become a niche topic that is inaccessible to the majority of the working class, and it’s only getting worse with the ways dark money is infiltrating our democracy. Big groups like GrowSF are positioning themselves as the “facts” faction, claiming there’s nothing but fearmongering happening when community members express their concerns.
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Now it’s all nothing but a numbers game. Three politicians in the last few weeks have said the phrase, “It has to pencil out.” That’s all affordable housing has become to them. Meanwhile our friends and neighbors who had the foresight to get on The List are struggling to find units within their budget (including Stuart, the namesake of this site).
The List? You don’t know about The List? Why, dear San Franciscan, how could you not know there’s a way for the Poor among us to sign up for the lottery to win a unit inside one of the fancy condo buildings that have popped up like dandelions along our streets?
These same lottery units that you, too, could win in a moonshot are those that the Mayor’s ball boy is proposing we ditch.
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And it’s worse than that! According to the San Francisco Business Times, the very idea that a cut of a fancy development should go back into making sure working class people can afford to live here has already been abandoned. And now officials are suggesting the inclusionary rate is also “not penciling out.”
Former Mayor Breed, to her credit, pushed through legislation in 2023 that allowed for tons of new units. Most of them have yet to be built. Now we’re adding more bait to the fishing hook and praying some big corps invest in building. But building what? And for whom?
You know how they say you’re closer to being homeless than you are to becoming a billionaire? That’s why the housing lotto exists. It’s not just a fun little game of chance. It’s policy in action, making sure people can afford to live here. It seems that the city is being rebuilt without those people in mind. We’re just numbers, not faces or names.
What’s being called the Family Zoning Plan is in the home stretch, and homes are barely a part of it. Planning should be deeply rooted in community, but instead the people pushing it have been described to this writer as smug, condescending, know-it-all types who don’t deign to answer to their constituents. Or even stick around to listen to them, having their schedules pre-empted by the overbooked and numbers-obsessed mayor’s office.
Slow down. Talk to your neighbors. Learn about the SF Tenant’s Union or the Community Land Trust. Sign up for the lotto. Stay out of the stupid, made-up, toxic little “yimby nimby” thing, words that Most Normal People haven’t even heard of. And remember, affordable homes are the solution to homelessness.
