The Engardio recall, Yimby urbanist elitism, and the next step in SF politics - 48 hills

"Everyone in the local news media is talking about the fallout from the Engardio recall. Some of them get the point, mostly: This is about more than the Great Highway, and it could mark the recreation of a powerful alliance that once passed the city's premier development-control measure and got the last real progressive, Art Agnos, elected mayor. In the early 1980s,"

"This was never about housing, no matter how the Yimby historians want to play it. Back then, nobody was building housing, because profits were higher in offices. (That, for the record, is how capitalism works.) Progressives were demanding, not opposing, new housing; one line I heard a lot was "if you create a job, you need to build a housing unit." The Office Housing Production Program, entirely a progressive idea, mandated that developers who were bringing new workers to the city build housing for them;"

"It was about preventing office creep, preventing "Manhattanization." There were, of course, some people who wanted to defend single-family housing on the West Side of town. But the bigger issue was growth in general: The city was growing too fast, with too much new population (to work in those highrise offices) and not enough infrastructure (or housing) to support that growth."

Engardio recall may signal revival of a coalition that once passed San Francisco's major development-control measure and elected Art Agnos. In the early 1980s, land-use politics pitted downtown developers against neighborhoods as office highrises expanded in the Financial District and Soma. Developers prioritized office profits over housing, prompting progressives to require that job-creating development include housing through the Office Housing Production Program. Opposition from City Hall led to ballot measures and eventual reductions in residential height limits to prevent office creep. The central concern was rapid growth driven by offices without sufficient infrastructure or housing to support incoming workers.

Read at 48 hills