A Board of Supes committee voted this week to approve a dramatic cut in the amount of affordable housing developers have to provide when they build luxury units—although nobody gave any evidence that this would jump start new housing.
In fact, city officials admit that affordability requirements aren’t holding back new housing right now, and if economic conditions improve, developers will be making money with various state and local incentives, but not helping with the affordability crisis.
It was, as is often the case with housing policy in San Francisco, almost surreal watching the discussion. Jacob Bintliff, the economic recovery director at the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Economic Development, told the Government Audit and Oversight Committee that a detailed study showed no housing project is feasible in this city today—even if the affordable requirements were eliminated entirely.
The costs of construction materials, labor—and most important, investment capital (much of which is now diverted from housing into data centers for AI)—makes new housing at any level impossible, and all the upzoning and developer giveaways aren’t seeming to change that…