SF City Attorney Must Defend San Francisco from State's Attacks on Housing Affordability
PRESS RELEASE FOR Wednesday, December 27, 2023
San Francisco – San Francisco's City Attorney must act to defend San Francisco from the State's threatened takeover that would force San Francisco to continue to put developers' profits over the affordability needs of San Franciscans. The State set a deadline of December 28 (tomorrow) for San Francisco to comply with the State's new set of requirements and timelines. Despite the Board of Supervisors passing a resolution instructing the City Attorney to defend the City, the City Attorney has not taken any action, despite tomorrow's deadline.
Community groups across San Francisco have been fighting to have the City finally put affordability and racial and social equity at the forefront of San Francisco’s housing policies. Advocates were successful in getting dozens of Actions in SF's Housing Element to do just that, putting the needs of low and moderate-income families and workers, people of color, and other historically marginalized people first. However, recent threats and strong-arming by the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) are positioning San Francisco to continue on the path of unaffordability, homelessness, and displacement that have become hallmarks of the City’s housing crisis. These include HCD’s threats to decertify SF's housing plan, with consequences for denial of state affordable housing funds and allowing the so-called “Builder's Remedy,” granting developers unchecked power.
“Nobody believes that building or approving more luxury condos will result in housing that most people can actually afford, but that’s what the state keeps pushing,” says Molly Goldberg of the San Francisco Anti Displacement Coalition (SFADC).
“It's a lie that this is for San Franciscans to have a place to live. It’s just about making the theoretical value of the land higher, so developers can squeeze as much profit as they can before dumping the properties. Often developer giveaways don’t even result in housing being built and when it is, it’s unaffordable,” says Gilbert Williams of PODER, a member of the Race & Equity in all Planning Coalition - San Francisco (REP-SF).
On December 5, 2023, a supermajority of the SF Board of Supervisors passed Resolution 231175 which instructed City Attorney David Chiu to defend the City against the overreach from the State and defend communities in the City that have been pushing for equity and affordability. The attempted state takeover precipitated from the San Francisco Housing Policy and Practice Review (PPR) released by HCD on October 25, 2023, that created exceptions for San Francisco that aren’t required of any other jurisdiction and were not required when the State approved SF's Housing Element in January.
“The Board of Supervisors is required to protect the City from legal jeopardy. When you have a supermajority of the Board of Supervisors directing the City Attorney, the City Attorney should act on that City policy,” says former SF Board of Supervisor and current Director of the Council of Community Housing Organizations (CCHO) John Avalos.
“If the State wants housing to be built at all, let alone for regular people, they should be focusing on affordable housing. Look around the City and you’ll see that the only buildings under construction and contributing to San Francisco’s economic recovery are affordable projects such as 730 Stanyan and 4200 Geary. Earlier this year, affordable housing organizations sacrificed higher inclusionary housing fee levels to jumpstart housing production. However, there’s still no capital flowing to market-rate projects and State sanctions are not going to fix that,” Avalos continues.
The recommendations by the State are similar to urban renewal in earlier decades, encouraging demolition of San Francisco’s rent-controlled housing through upzoning which could result in a huge number of low-income people, especially seniors, facing evictions and homelessness. The State is also recommending that the City no longer allow public hearings that have been used by tenant advocates to prevent displacement and also help guide the City to more affordable housing and other equitable outcomes through community input.
"My partner has lived in our Richmond District rent-controlled apartment for 17 years, and now speculators are kicking us out along with our two small children. Over the years, we have built a strong community with our neighbors, and our six year old was just accepted into our neighborhood public elementary school. Our new speculator landlords that already own multiple properties don't care about community - they are only motivated by profit. More speculation through the State's and the City's efforts to upzone and super-charge the market will only result in more families like us suffering displacement," said Anthony Hernandez.
“The state is blocking the equity playbook communities have laid out for our city planning. We can continue to create job opportunities, do community-based economic development and sustain our local economies by taking the equity-based approaches that are acknowledged in San Francisco’s Housing Element, and that HCD seeks to override,” says Jeantelle Laberinto of the REP-SF Coalition. “We need development without displacement and the ball is in the City Attorney’s court to make this happen by pushing back against the State overreach.”
The Mayor, the City and the State all need to step up in terms of leadership, investments and resources to enact a wide range of affordability strategies to build a healthy city. San Francisco and the State of California are neglecting their legal requirement to Affirmatively Further Fair Housing and the mandate to build 57% of new housing as affordable to low and moderate incomes and prevent displacement of vulnerable communities.
The current San Francisco Housing Element passed in early 2023 and which guides the City’s housing policies over the next eight years was to be the first to “center racial and social equity” according to SF's Planning Department.