YIMBY mobilizing to block affordable housing in and around Hayes Valley
SF YIMBY is now mobilizing to abolish developer fees in and around Hayes Valley which fund the development of affordable housing. This comes on the heels of Grow SF staffers actively opposing affordable housing on the city-owned affordable housing site on Parcel K in the heart of Hayes Valley. The proposed legislation would eliminate affordable housing fees along with the Citizens Advisory Committee that has consistently supported the affordable housing fees and passed a resolution strongly supporting the development of affordable housing on Parcel K.
Sonja Trauss, founder of YIMBY, with a 2016 tweet of her thoughts on "black land" in San Francisco. “gentrification is what we call the revaluation of black land to its correct price.”
Parcel K, a paved surface lot at the corner of Hayes and Octavia Streets where the Central Freeway once stood, was transferred from state ownership under Caltrans to the City and County of San Francisco in 2003, for the express purpose of developing 100% affordable housing on site. It has the capacity to create 100 homes for low-income San Franciscans in a neighborhood where working people struggle to find affordable housing. This neighborhood was once a mostly Black neighborhood, but years of redevelopment, gentrification, and evictions have displaced many of the Black residents.
YIMBY-backed former Mayor London Breed repeatedly refused to advance housing on this site. My office at the time insisted on a timeline for development of the site. In a landmark 2022 deal, we even secured an agreement from the developer of a nearby condo tower to commit $1m to predevelopment of Parcel K. At question time before the board, we repeatedly pressed Mayor Breed to commit to a timeline for affordable housing development on Parcel K. She refused.
In March of 2023, following our advocacy, the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development at long last published a timeline for development, with a commitment to starting the development process by issuing an RFQ by August 2023. Despite this promise, no RFQ was issued in August 2023, and no RFQ has been issued to date. Asked about it again at Question Time in October 2023, the Mayor refused to commit to a timeline to issue the RFQ.
Mayor Lurie and Supervisor Mahmood have done what London Breed did before them: folded to a handful of well-connected neighbors who prefer a paved lot to housing for the working poor. This is deeply problematic not just for Hayes Valley but for our whole city. We have no chance of meeting our goal of 46,598 affordable homes in the 2023-2031 cycle if city leaders won’t even fight for affordable housing on public land that’s dedicated for affordable housing.
To make matters even worse, Mayor Lurie, Supervisor Dorsey, and Supervisor Mahmood have now introduced legislation to ban affordable housing fees on development in the area and to eliminate the Market Octavia Citizen Advisory Committee, the very body that passed a resolution urging development of affordable housing on Parcel K.
YIMBY leaders and YIMBY-backed elected officials have blocked housing development at Parcel K for years. Now, they are trying to eliminate affordable housing fees that fund affordable housing development in the neighborhood. Their efforts to block housing at Parcel K and defund affordable housing in the neighborhood should be a national embarrassment for the group that calls itself “pro-housing”. That they would do this in a formerly Black working class neighborhood from which gentrification has driven out most of the Black residents says everything about their movement. This anti-housing legislation to block affordable housing in the Market Octavia area should be withdrawn.