Monday, November 27 2023
The San Francisco Anti Displacement Coalition has joined forces with the Race & Equity in all Planning Coalition – San Francisco (REP-SF), and the Council of Community Housing Organizations (CCHO) to take a stand against the State’s attempt to completely take over the City’s housing regulations. The California Department of Housing and Community Development’s (HCD) “San Francisco Housing Policy and Practice Review” (PPR) released on October 25, 2023 attempts to completely deregulate unaffordable, market-rate housing, encourages the demolition of the City’s limited rent-controlled housing stock, puts tenants at increased risk of displacement and will do nothing to address San Francisco’s affordability crisis. In fact, despite blatant omissions by the State in the Review and outright lies by developer lobbyists and by the politicians supported by them, San Franciscans will see increased market-rate housing costs, in addition to cuts to affordable housing funding from the State.
We know this unprecedented power play is designed to give luxury developers unchecked power at the expense of working and middle class San Franciscans. Collectively representing nearly a hundred organizations with decades of experience developing affordable housing, protecting tenants, and building strong communities, we know the high costs of this developer giveaway to the communities who fight so hard to remain in the city we love.
We are supporting a Resolution under consideration by the Board of Supervisors that is pushing back against the State takeover. The Resolution demands the State’s Department of Housing and Community Development rescind the “Policy and Practice Review”, as it rewrites San Francisco’s Housing Element, which was to guide San Francisco’s housing policies for the next eight years. The PPR threatens to decertify the Housing Element before the end of the year if the city does not take the ill-advised measures to silence communities, put tenants at increased risk of displacement, and fully deregulate the permitting and construction of market-rate housing.
“It’s the voices and leadership of our communities that the State wants to silence that have created affordable housing projects and community spaces like the Kapuso at Upper Yard, Casa Adelante, Hummingbird Farms and the Marvel in the Mission. Instead of pursuing the solutions that communities fought to get into the Housing Element that would remedy San Francisco’s bureaucracy while centering racial, social and economic equity, the State is silencing communities so that developers will no longer need to be responsive to their needs,” says Reina Tello of Communities United for Health and Justice, a member of REP-SF.
“The City of San Francisco overproduced its market-rate housing goals and has one of the best track records on building affordable housing in California,” said John Avalos, Executive Director at the Council of Community Housing Organizations. “It makes no sense for the HCD to use this stick approach, to decertify San Francisco’s Housing Element and deny the very affordable resources the City will need to reach the State mandated Housing Element goals. If the HCD truly wanted cities to maximize affordable housing production they should be providing as many carrots as possible. San Francisco and many other cities across California deserve better.”
The HCD blames the slow rate of housing applications on the City’s review and approval process while ignoring the fact that market-rate housing responds entirely to the financial context. High interest rates, tech layoffs, and a declining population all play a part in preventing developers from initiating new housing projects in San Francisco. None of these economic realities were acknowledged in the PPR and the State seeks to punish San Francisco by withdrawing affordable housing and transportation dollars. Indeed, the State’s own Housing Element mandate calls for 57% of the housing in the next eight years to be affordable, yet everything they are doing is merely to support luxury developers’ profits and power.
“The so-called ‘builder’s remedy’ imposed by the State encourages mass demolition of rent control housing and will cause a spike in evictions and loss of one of few sources of affordable housing we have,” says Molly Goldberg of the The San Francisco Anti Displacement Coalition (SFADC).
Read our coalitions’ letters to HCD and the Board of Supervisors.