There are two kinds of progressive Democratic California politicians.
All and sundry are down with universal healthcare, justice for Palestine, and ICE out now—the boilerplate home truths of the clan.
The split comes on housing. On that most crucial issue facing the state—putting roofs over more heads with some semblance of affordability here in the most attractive place to live on the planet—you have your traditional NIMBYs, and then you have your newfangled YIMBYs.
Not in my backyard: Sure, housing is a good idea, somewhere else.
Yes in my backyard: Build it anywhere—just like I did with that ADU in my literal backyard.
There is one California congressional race this fall that is a perfect representation of this split. It’s in San Francisco, that most beautiful and, in its urbanity, somehow least Californian of our cities. The seat is the most iconic one for Democrats around the nation: that of retiring former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
The contest in November pits San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan, who has Pelosi’s endorsement, against local state Senator Scott Wiener. Both are rock stars in The City.
And both certainly agree that their hometown—where a one-bedroom apartment rents for $4,000 a month—is not an affordable place to live, what with every tech bro in the world able to pony up funny money for a pad.
Chan, throughout her entire political career, has been in the preservationist camp of progressivism.
“Chan has largely opposed new housing and development projects,” CalMatters reports, “saying she’s prioritizing tenants who would be displaced and small businesses that could lose business during construction. She has said that the ‘urban renewal’ of the city’s Fillmore district from the 1950s through 1970s had detrimental effects on San Francisco’s Black community and doesn’t want the same to happen in other neighborhoods.”
While she’s not wrong about the Fillmore, her resistance to more housing has been a hallmark of the main camp of San Francisco progressivism for decades now—a group for whom all developers represent The Man, all are corporate profiteers, and all change is bad. She opposed newly elected moderate Mayor Daniel Lurie’s family zoning plan, an upzoning measure that increases allowable density and building heights near public transit stations and along major corridors.
Chan even led an effort to sue the state on the housing issue, claiming new requirements unfairly target San Francisco. Which, of course, they don’t; they apply in jurisdictions across the state in the effort to build more housing.
Wiener, on the other hand, as a state senator, has been the biggest proponent in Sacramento of cutting red tape and creating more housing in California. He wrote Senate Bill 79, a bill almost universally maligned by mayors and city councils across the state that made a wonderfully extreme change in how development can occur: It legalizes transit-oriented development by allowing multifamily housing up to seven stories near major train stations and high-frequency bus stops—by right, and without NIMBYs having the ability to object.
This, to city officials, is an appalling example of a loss of local control over zoning and development—which is true. But sometimes a crisis, which is what we have with housing at all levels (from people living on the street to middle-class families who can’t afford California), demands a strong response.
Wiener also wrote successful legislation streamlining the housing approval process in local jurisdictions that fail to meet state-mandated construction goals, setting minimum standards for floor-area ratios and lot sizes to prevent restrictive local rules from blocking multifamily development, and allowing affordable housing projects to be built by right on land owned by faith-based organizations and nonprofit colleges.
That’s my kind of progressive: the unreactionary kind. I hope Wiener takes his passion for abundant housing in California to Washington, D.C.
Larry Wilson is on the Southern California News Group editorial board. lwilson@scng.com.