What About the Housing Mandates (Part 1/2)

Dear Friends & Neighbors,

If you have been following the new housing mandates and rezoning laws in the least bit, you are probably confused and shocked about what is going to happen in our District 7. Please click here to see a map of the new up zoning. I have attended two housing townhall meetings in recent weeks, one in D4, hosted by Sunset United Neighborhoods, and one in D3, hosted by Telegraph Hill Dwellers. And judging by the reactions from the crowds, people are not happy.

There is more to the housing debate than what meets the eye. In a nutshell, Sacramento wants us to believe that California has a housing crisis and more construction is needed to meet the state's housing needs. So the state is essentially mandating that San Francisco, along with other cities, propose and pass all sorts of new rules and regulations to meet these needs. 

Building more houses is normal and necessary, The problem arises when Sacramento decides to force cities to comply with its mandates. I found a very interesting persepctive here. According to the author, Lee Ohanian, who is a professor of economics at UCLA, for more than 50 years, Sacramento has used central planning methods, no different than those used during the time of the Soviet Union, to increase housing production. And these methods have repeatedly failed, because top-down command structures violate the basic market forces of supply and demand and suppress individual freedoms.

So, why do politicians like our own Senator Scott Wiener still insist that top-down control is the answer? Well, if you follow the money, you will see that the majority of Senator Wiener's campaign contributions have come from the finance and real estate sectors.  So, there you have it. The more houses get built the more money Scott Wiener and his developer friends put into their pockets. Not much different from how the oligarchs in Russia get rich and stay in power. 

In an attempt to return to a more democratic, bottom-up decision making process for meeting our housing needs in D7, we will be holding a townhall next week on Tuesday, Feb 13th, at 7pm at the Miraloma Park Improvement Club. We will have experts there who can speak and answer questions regarding the pros and cons of the housing elements. Please attend and share your thoughts!

Thank you,

Lefteris Eleftheriou