Status quo means higher rents and more homeless people. California must pass SB 50

I grew up in public housing in San Francisco’s Western Addition neighborhood, where I was raised by my grandmother. Violence was never far away, poverty was all around us and the odds were never in my favor that I would be the first person in my family to go to college, let alone one day become the Mayor of San Francisco.

Earlier this month, when I was sworn in for my first full term as mayor, I looked into the crowd and saw friends, family and people from my community who helped raise me. I was so proud to see them, but I was also saddened. The truth is the majority of them no longer live in San Francisco, or even in California. Those who remain are barely hanging on.

In 1970, African Americans made up 13 percent of San Francisco’s population. Today, we are just five percent of the population. This is not an accident of history. In San Francisco, and in other cities across our state and country, African Americans have encountered red-lining laws, urban renewal and the racist policies of “slum clearance”.

The continued exodus of African Americans and countless other low- and middle-income residents can also be traced directly to another, more subtle discriminatory decision: the downzoning of almost three-quarters of San Francisco in the 1970’s to effectively ban apartment buildings.

San Francisco’s planning director at that time expressed concerns that this downzoning would reduce the supply of new housing and lead the City to become even more unaffordable to all but the wealthiest residents. He was right. Today, the average home in San Francisco sells for $1.6 million and rents are among the highest in the country.

Too many of those people I grew up with have moved away to Antioch, or Richmond, or Vallejo, because of the high cost of housing. Yet even in their new communities, they are continuing to see rents rise, because the same dynamics that played out in San Francisco over the past 40 years are now playing out in cities and towns throughout California. By effectively banning apartments in much of the state, we simply have not zoned to allow for enough new homes to be built to keep up with job and population growth. The result has been the housing shortage we face today.

Gov. Newsom has called for the creation of 3.5 million homes as a solution to this challenge. If we’re going to do this, every part of the state must play their part, which is why the legislature needs to pass state Senator Scott Wiener’s SB 50.

SB 50 does not remove local control – it simply says that cities and towns must decide how they grow rather than if they grow. Sen. Wiener’s new amendments to the bill allow two years for localities to make plans that make sense for their communities. Only if they refuse to do so would the zoning changes under SB 50 kick in.

I’m especially proud Sen. Wiener has amended SB 50 to give preference in new affordable housing to the people that live in that community. This builds off of legislation I passed in San Francisco that has helped ensure that people in neighborhoods where we are building affordable housing have access to that housing.

We cannot continue the status quo on housing in California. The status quo means higher rents. The status quo means a continued rise in homelessness and human suffering on our streets. The status quo means more displacement, continued sprawl, longer commutes, increased emissions and the exacerbation of extreme inequality throughout our state. This is an issue of equity, and it’s an issue of urgency.

It’s time for action. It’s time to pass SB 50.