Let's Get Organized and Fix Housing Affordability in San Francisco

I applaud the effort, but I'm skeptical that building enough additional housing is politically feasible in San Francisco.

San Francisco has its head twisted the wrong way on this issue more than just about any place else. A lot of people here will deny, with a straight face, that supply and demand is real or that it's a relevant lens for understanding the affordability problem. When you're faced with magical thinking like that, what can you do? And it's not just SF either, it's the peninsula too.

Rather than trying to push additional homebuilding at the local level, I think it's more important to work at the state level. When we include the whole state, we include all the people that are being excluded from the core expensive areas. People like the firefighter who commutes from Roseville to Palo Alto[0] have a vote at the state level, but not in bay area local elections. That may make the necessary change more politically feasible at the state level.

And some of the relevant legislation exists at the state-level and needs to be fixed there. For example, we should tweak the CEQA so that a few NIMBYs can't simply veto new development.

[0] http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2016/04/07/in-search-of-cheaper-hou...