Editor:
Does the City truly want to fix the homelessness crisis, or are officials merely posturing for votes all while allowing the problem to persist?
We are told the housing shortage is because of regulatory red tape, zoning restrictions, labor requirements, high interest rates, etc. These factors contribute to the housing issue, but there’s a deeper layer to this crisis that often goes unnoticed.
At dozens of the mayoral campaign events that I attended last year, I witnessed firsthand how politicians leverage affordable housing as a political tool. They use housing to attract the votes of lower income people, aspiring first time home owners, construction workers and on and on.
There are impossible and irresponsible commitments made to build 46,000 affordable housing units in the city by 2031 with the average cost per unit breaching $1 million. A $50 billion political tool. And, this doesn’t include the tens of billions in infrastructure required to handle the new housing (sewer, water, fire, transportation, etc.).
Politicians never discuss how many city employees or services would have to be cut in order to achieve this unrealistic goal. The cost would far exceed the city’s $15.9 billion annual budget. Tell people what they want to hear, but don’t be honest about the sacrifices needed to attempt such a romantically idealistic utopian goal.
The housing crisis is fabricated. Developers, construction firms and real estate moguls are often the top donors to our politicians. In 1950 the City’s population was 775,000. Today it is 810,000, all while the housing stock has nearly doubled in that timeframe. Building $1 million affordable housing units will never bring prices down. It will only further burden our city budget.
Meanwhile, the City is funding projects like 1234 Great Highway, a $200 million affordable housing complex with a 50/50 mix of seniors and formerly unhoused senior individuals. When factoring in land acquisition, construction, financing, maintenance costs and staffing, each unit approaches nearly $2 million. Instead of investing in services to get people on their feet, politicians focus on the housing carrot.
The city had a chance to buy 4326 Irving which could have housed over 40 people in new construction at a cost of about $200,000 per person. Instead, they turned it down for projects that will cost nearly ten times as much per person and then later they will complain they can’t provide treatment. Again, do politicians really want to house the unhoused?
Warehousing people isn’t the answer. In 2023 the City reported over 800 overdoses. Many of whom were housed.
The City’s diversity, equity, and inclusion claims ring hollow when thousands continue to live in squalor while a select few benefit from these excessively costly housing projects.
I wish Mayor Lurie well because as long as the homeless industrial complex, developers, lawyers, accountants, real-estate moguls and politicians benefit from this crisis it is likely to persist.
Mike Nohr, a concerned Sunset resident.
4326 Irving St #203, San Francisco, CA 94122 | Zillow
4326 Irving St, San Francisco, CA 94122 – 4326 Irving St | LoopNet
New Details For 1234 Great Highway, Outer Sunset, San Francisco – San Francisco YIMBY
Categories: letter to the editor
Richmond Review/Sunset Beacon 
The views from the third floor up to the eighth floor of 1234 Great Highway are going to be spectacular. Why do I have a feeling that low-income and formally homeless seniors will never see them? I predict there will be delays and cost overruns and the land will eventually be sold to developers who will then build fewer but much larger market rate condos from the third floor up, with a penthouse on the eighth floor and an enclosed parking garage on the first. The second floor will be kept for low-income seniors though (rather than formally homeless seniors – they would bring down the value), because if there is one thing this city does well, it’s virtue signalling.
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It seems the city Bureaucracy sees and hears what they want, that way they don’t have to deal with the citizens who actually know, because they have to live with this agenda!
One wonders if the Mayor, the BOS, or members of the Planning Commission even read these important letters that are posted with the Richmond/Sunset News, because that’s who really needs to read the cries of concern from the people!
Is there no Democracy or are there just a few of the elitists who decide everything? And are those who are in office not staying neutral but using or hiding behind their special interests to stay in office?
Thank you Michael Nohr.
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I completely agree with the author’s point that politicians are using a manufactured housing crisis narrative to push developments that don’t actually serve our community. What San Francisco politicians really want is to seduce — or be seduced by — global property developers. Their dream is to fill our neighborhoods with high-end, high-density projects that look good on paper but don’t actually house anyone.
They want to build ghost buildings — developments that appear occupied on the outside but sit largely empty, used as investment shells or tax write-offs. This is already happening in cities like Shenzhen and Ordos in China, where entire neighborhoods were built and never filled. And now, it’s creeping into the Sunset.
Just look at The Westerly on 2800 Sloat:
56 condo units
Zero parking
Barely any owner-occupied units
Ground-floor retail that’s never been used
It’s lifeless. It’s a ghost building. And it’s a sign of what’s to come if we don’t push back.
And here’s the kicker: These ghost projects aren’t just ugly or wasteful — they threaten our tax base and harm longtime homeowners:
We need leaders who represent residents, not developers. Because building shells for global capital while pushing out working families isn’t housing justice — it’s community theft.
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Good article. Folks who are concerned may want to review some of the sordid history to understand why SF and other cities are being forced to “comply” with housing “requirements” – who do you suppose moved the goalposts to create a fiction . . . ? https://48hills.org/2024/03/why-the-wiener-housing-bills-will-never-work-and-will-destroy-the-coast-a-detailed-primer/
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