The Golden Gate

So, everybody knows that there’s not enough housing in San Francisco. And therefore the housing we do have is damn expensive. Part of that is due to geography: the city of St. Francis is surrounded on three sides by water, and there’s really no “new” land on which to build. So, perhaps it’s not surprising that we have some of the highest housing prices here — both in terms of rent costs and real estate prices.

We also have one of the strictest Rent Control laws in the nation and a byzantine set of severe restrictions and rules regarding building any kind of new housing.

Some of us think that these last two items make the problem worse, not better.

And yet, the predominant view on our Board of Supervisors is that we need yet MORE laws to “fix” our current problems.

Two of the current proposals under consideration by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors are:

1) To require a payment of $4,500 to each tenant whenever a property owner takes a building off the rental market (ie: when the building’s owner(s) turn a rental building into Condominiums.)

2) To require that any new residential developments set aside 20% (or more) of new units for designation as “affordable housing” — priced well below market rates at a price set by the Supervisors. (The current rule — instituted four years ago — is that 10% of all new units now must be set aside in this way.)

“I honestly believe that what we call the housing crisis relative to units is going to stabilize in the next half-dozen years,” [Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin] told The Examiner on Tuesday. “Affordability is another matter,” he added, arguing that unless government takes a more active role, the shortage of low-cost housing won’t go away.

“You have to legislate your way out of this problem,” he said.

Ahhh, yes. “You have to legislate your way out of this problem.” This, in a nutshell, is the prevailing attitude among San Francisco politicos. I appreciate Mr. Peskin’s honesty.

But, perhaps — just perhaps — Mr. Peskin, it is, in fact, all those well-intentioned PAST attempts to “legislate [our] way out of” problems which have led to, or at least exacerbated, the current set of problems we have now.

So, can we at least put that notion on the table for consideration? Please?