A Tale of Two Safeways: How Two Development Sites Are Exposing Hypocrisy

Massive development projects are planned for two Safeway lots in San Francisco: one in the Fillmore and one in the Marina. Many San Francisco politicians rushed to embrace the Fillmore Safeway development, but are running as far away from the Marina Safeway development as they can get. The starkly different reactions to these two Safeways are exposing the racism, classism, and hypocrisy at the core of SF’s housing discourse.

In recent years, pro-development narratives have dominated housing discourse and media coverage. YIMBY, an industry-backed and developer-backed network that takes its name from an acronym for “yes in my backyard,” has positioned itself as the leading voice for increasing housing supply and has gained influence with local politicians.

YIMBYs follow a trickle-down economic theory, claiming that increasing the supply of luxury housing will reduce housing prices for all. They define themselves as “urbanists” who seek to create dense, walkable communities. They push deregulation, arguing that mandates like affordable housing minimums, community benefits, or environmental review are “red-tape” that holds up development. Whenever neighbors raise concerns about proposed market-rate housing, YIMBY groups label them “NIMBY,” a pejorative acronym for “not in my backyard.” But lately, when housing is proposed in wealthier neighborhoods of San Francisco, prominent YIMBYs have been the ones blocking housing.

Fillmore Safeway: 30 Story Buildings for Rich White People in a Black Neighborhood

The Fillmore Safeway operated for four decades in the heart of the Fillmore, once known as the Harlem of the West and now one of San Francisco’s last remaining Black neighborhoods. The site is former redevelopment land, where Black homes and businesses were bulldozed as part of “urban renewal,” which drove thousands of Black San Franciscans out of the city. The land was sold to Safeway for pennies on the dollar so the company would provide a grocery store for the community.

In January 2024, Safeway announced that it was shutting down the store and selling the lot to Align Real Estate for the housing development. Fillmore community leaders repeatedly made clear that housing on this site needed to be affordable to neighborhood residents, not unaffordable market rate housing that would further gentrify the community and accelerate Black displacement. Safeway and Align declined requests to sell the site to the City or a nonprofit developer to build affordable housing.

In November 2025, Align revealed details of its plan: 1,800 units on the site, using the state’s density bonus program. A mere 15% of the units would be at “below market” rates -- the minimum required under law. YIMBY politicians immediately embraced the plan as proposed. The day it was announced, YIMBY Supervisor Bilal Mahmood told the Chronicle he's endorsing Align's proposal. No city officials raised concerns, even as neighborhood leaders warned that this project was another wave of gentrification to the Fillmore. Thanks to YIMBY state laws championed by YIMBY Senator Scott Wiener, there will be little opportunity for the community to weigh in and the project is headed toward near automatic approval.

Marina Safeway: 25 Story Tower of Condos in Rich White Neighborhood

Align Real Estate announced another project a month later: 790 units of housing on the Marina Safeway lot, including a 25 story tower, with only 86 (11%) “below market” units. One would think the self-proclaimed YIMBY “pro-housing” crowd would be delighted -- housing for about 2,000 people in a highly desirable neighborhood that’s seen virtually no new housing development in generations. 

Instead, in a surprise to some observers, YIMBY leaders and YIMBY politicians came out fighting. The YIMBY Mayor, himself a Marina resident, immediately condemned the proposal in his back yard. He vowed that his administration would “stand up firmly to developers that game the system.” He promised to “pull every lever” to make the project “work for the neighborhood.” And he wasn’t the only YIMBY politician to oppose the project.

YIMBY Supervisor Stephen Sherrill, who had recently worked to legislatively exempt the Marina Safeway lot from local upzoning, also voiced his opposition and vowed to fight the project. “I won’t let it go unchallenged,” Sherrill told the Chronicle. He called it “our neighborhood’s cartoonish mega-project.” 

YIMBY-endorsed candidates echoed the same theme. As the Chronicle reported, “Marina Community Association President Eric Kingsbury, who was endorsed by YIMBY Action when he ran for assembly delegate, objected to ‘the scale of the project.’”

What about Scott Wiener, the author of the state laws that enable projects that allow developers unlimited heights and take away community voice in the process? Wiener aggressively smears anyone who doesn’t immediately support any development proposal as a NIMBY. Surely he’d support this project, right? 

Not while he’s running for Congress. He released a video in which he carefully avoids taking a position on the development. “Some people love it, some people hate it,” he said. “I’m not here to talk about whether you should like it or hate it.”

YIMBY influencers, who regularly attack tenant advocates and community groups that ask for more affordability or any changes to developments as NIMBYs, took to social media, making clear that the standards are different when wealthy white people in the Marina have concerns about “neighborhood character.” YIMBY Adam Nathan’s widely shared video offered such a clear example of the different set of rules that it led veteran activist Toshio Meronek to comment, “When you scratch a YIMBY, a NIMBY bleeds.”

The Hypocrisy Isn’t New, But This Time It’s Too Obvious to Ignore

This is not the first time that self-described “pro-housing” or “YIMBY” leaders have opposed new housing in San Francisco. Instead it follows a familiar pattern. 

The SF YIMBY political project has unconditionally supported homes for wealthy people in communities of color. They belittle gentrification and displacement concerns, oppose affordability mandates, and attack regulations on luxury condos going into lower-income communities. But they have blocked low-income housing in gentrified communities -- such as Hayes Valley, where YIMBY leaders and a YIMBY mayor blocked affordable housing on city-owned Parcel K. And increasingly, they are also opposing high density market rate housing projects in more upscale neighborhoods. 

The Safeway lot proposals are strikingly similar — same grocery store chain, same developer, comparable plans, unveiled within a month of each other, both opposed by neighbors (in the Fillmore, neighbors objected because of affordability and in the Marina, neighbors objected because of the size and scale). Yet the responses from YIMBY politicians to the two proposals are polar opposites, siding with neighbors in the Marina while ignoring neighbors’ pleas in the Fillmore.

For years, the YIMBY approach has been to label anyone who wants changes in a development proposal as a “NIMBY.” YIMBY academic and frequent Chronicle source Jason McDaniels put it succinctly in his pinned tweet: “I don’t care why you oppose a particular housing project.”

It’s true. YIMBY leaders don’t care why someone opposes a particular project. But they definitely care who is doing the opposing.