What Is San Francisco's Latest Affordable Housing Push, and Will It Pass?

An eye for an eye, and a skyscraper for a housing development. In the latest move to curb San Francisco’s dwindling housing stock and rising home prices, the city voted on if it should tie the new office space allotment to the amount of affordable housing built. This way, the city can still grow, but it will not further burden the housing inventory, pushing prices even higher. The vote has not passed yet, but preliminary results show that over half of the voters support the measure so far as officials continue to count the ballots. 

John Elberling has a drastic plan to address the city’s housing crisis: no more new skyscrapers.

Or at least a trade off. The city of San Francisco allows for a yearly allotment of new office space based on how much affordable housing gets built. No new housing? That allotment goes down.

“There clearly has to be a balance, where you don’t grow faster than you can handle it,” he said.

It’s the newest effort by San Franciscans to draw a line in the concrete over the growth that has made it a global hub of technological innovation but also the archetype of what a sudden influx of well-paid tech workers can do to a city.

And Elberling, a local advocate who is the head of a nonprofit housing organization, has support for his plan. He put the measure, Proposition E, on the local ballot in Tuesday’s election, and although the final result won’t be known for days as mail-in ballots are counted, preliminary results showed it getting support from 55 percent of the voters.

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