JOEL ON HOUSING
Overview
Joel is a westside homeowner. He knows many westside residents are looking for new types of housing to meet their needs. Young families want affordable apartments that will allow them to stay in San Francisco. Seniors want the option to downsize to an apartment in an elevator building where they can safely age in place without leaving their neighborhood. Building multi-family housing will help grandparents remain close to their grandkids.
Our future depends on being able to keep seniors, young adults, and middle-income families in San Francisco — along with welcoming newcomers who bring their talents and diversity to our city. We can do this by embracing more multi-family housing that can coexist with single-family homes and complement the westside neighborhoods we love.
Joel also knows housing is an equity and environmental issue. Improving San Francisco’s diversity depends on building new housing that a middle income family can afford — and ensuring that enough of our existing housing stock remains rent controlled. To address climate change, we need to drive less and reduce suburban sprawl. This requires building more housing near public transit.
Housing is also essential for addressing homelessness. Read Joel’s platform on homelessness here.
Focus on “missing middle” housing
San Francisco has a housing shortage, which makes it too expensive for a new generation to make the westside their home. Post-pandemic changes to how we work and live will provide opportunities to reimagine housing policies and address our housing shortage. That’s why we must be open to creative solutions that adapt to new realities, like converting office buildings into housing. It’s also important to keep rent control protections in place to ensure existing residents can remain in San Francisco.
Joel is focused on creating the “missing middle” housing that working families can no longer find in our city. Joel was an early advocate for new housing on transit corridors, even before that concept was largely accepted. We haven’t yet built transit corridor housing on the westside and we must make it a priority. But it won’t be enough to meet our needs. We must also allow multi-family housing within single-family home neighborhoods. And we need to make it easier to get housing built. It shouldn’t take years for a project to get approval.
Joel does not want to see single-family homes eliminated. A sprinkling of small apartment buildings throughout the westside won’t diminish the neighborhoods we love. The westside will always be a majority of single-family homes. If individual homeowners want to convert their property into a duplex or fourplex, they should have that right — especially if doing so benefits their family. Multi-family housing gives the next generation a chance to put down roots and help create our best westside.
That’s why Joel supports legislation that removes barriers to new housing. The legislation is technical. But it also has heart. The technical part provides common sense reforms to outdated zoning regulations. The heart of the legislation keeps our loved ones in San Francisco by making it easier to house them.
Let’s build the housing residents are asking for
Today’s new housing should be created with the goal of solving the real needs of longtime residents:
People want to stay close to their families, but adult children and grandchildren can’t afford to live in San Francisco. With an average home price of around $1.5 million, families of most income levels are finding it increasingly difficult to buy a home here. We are facing a “missing middle.”
Residents who were fortunate to find housing have few options to relocate when they have kids and need more space.
Seniors have no options to downsize when they become elderly and unable to navigate the stairs or maintain a large home. There is nowhere to safely age in place — such as an elevator building — without leaving their neighborhood or San Francisco entirely.
Newcomers who wish to move to the city and bring their innovative talents and diversity are deprived of an inviting housing market.
What is the Dom-i-city housing idea?
Dom-i-city stands for “domiciles in the city.” It’s ideal for San Francisco’s westside neighborhoods. This article describes the concept in detail.
Retired architect Eugene Lew designed a six-story elevator building of family-centered housing. Dom-i-city would fit on the footprint of one, two, or three standard lots. On a single standard lot, it puts five stories of townhouse housing (one unit on each floor) above a ground floor with off-street parking, community space, or retail.
On a transit corridor, a larger Dom-i-city could hold 15 units of two and three-bedroom family housing. All the units can face a courtyard below for kids to safely play or families to have a vegetable garden.
Imagine several Dom-i-city structures within a few blocks of each other. One can include a grocery on the ground floor that serves the entire neighborhood or even a senior center. Another might provide space for child daycare. Others could anchor bakeries or cafés.
Neighborhoods that are far from a commercial corridor would be transformed into vibrant communities where people can connect and enjoy amenities close to their homes.
Dom-i-city fills the need for “missing middle” housing — mid-rise buildings with at least two bedrooms per unit. The new residents will also create the foot traffic and become the customers to revitalize and sustain commercial corridors.
Dom-i-city doesn’t propose replacing all single-family homes. Westside areas like the Sunset will always be a majority of single-family homes. But Dom-i-city offers options that currently do not exist. If only five percent of Sunset homes were converted to Dom-i-city, it would create 6,000 new homes — much-needed housing for both middle-income families and seniors who want to age in place in the neighborhoods they love.
Dom-i-city returns areas of the westside to its original intention. Beautiful five and six-story apartment buildings from the Art Deco era were built on West Portal Avenue and Irving Street a century ago. San Francisco built multi-family housing until the 1970s. But since then we have implemented zoning laws that limited most areas to single-family units.
Dom-i-city goes back to the future to solve San Francisco’s housing needs.
What is Paris in the Sunset?
Joel once described the Dom-i-city housing concept as a chance to “turn the Sunset into Paris.” Some took umbrage that the Sunset or any of San Francisco’s distinct neighborhoods would become a carbon copy of another city.
Joel’s point was that six-story buildings are common in the residential areas of Paris, a city many consider beautiful and livable. Visitors recall the quaint sidewalk cafes, ground floor bistros and tree-lined streets — not the building height. With Dom-i-city, San Francisco could inspire the same feeling.
San Francisco has a need for “missing middle” housing — mid-rise buildings with at least two bedrooms per unit. San Francisco used to build those before neighborhoods adopted strict height limits. For example, there are two six-story apartment buildings from the Art Deco era on Irving Street.
New mid-rise buildings would blend well in outer neighborhoods like the Bayview, Excelsior, Richmond and Sunset.
Dom-i-city fits the bill. It’s a mid-rise building of five residential stories above a ground floor dedicated to a versatile combination of parking, retail and community space. Customizable facades can match neighborhood character.
If we build concepts like Dom-i-city, we won’t need comparisons to Paris. We will have created our best San Francisco.
Can we build new housing without ruining neighborhood character?
Yes. Consider the six-story apartment buildings from the Art Deco area on West Portal Avenue and Irving Street. They represent the original vision for our transit corridors, before zoning laws were changed to outlaw multi-story housing throughout most of San Francisco.
Those Art Deco buildings have coexisted with single-family homes for a century and few would argue they ruin the westside’s character. We can build more apartments with interesting, beautiful facades to match the Art Deco style already in place.
There is even more potential for housing along Taraval and Judah, which would improve the public transportation experience for all residents. Increased density at the end of those Muni rail lines will ensure train service goes all the way to the ocean without switching back at 19th Avenue to meet demand in more dense areas.
The added housing will also help revitalize our commercial districts. More residents will create the market for more small businesses and amenities that will benefit everyone who lives in the area.
How and why housing is killed in San Francisco
When city supervisors rejected a housing development of 500 units (100 affordable) that was slated for a downtown parking lot, it raised a lot of questions. This article explains the behavior of elected officials when it comes to saying yes or no to new housing. This article explains how one director of a non-profit organization holds political power over the process.
The role of rent control
Joel supports expanding rent control. It is an essential policy to keep people housed, especially vulnerable populations.
Since 1979, our rent control ordinance has protected thousands of tenants with stable, secure, and affordable housing.
But anything built after 1979 is not included in rent control. We can’t let that date be frozen in time. We need to move the date forward. Joel voted with the Board of Supervisors to expand rent control to 1994. The legislation is dependent on state law changing to allow for local rent control expansion. Joel hopes that our state legislators will let cities expand rent control in ways that do not hinder the construction of much-needed new housing. Ideally, Joel supports making the expansion dynamic with the date moving forward each year automatically.
New housing for a more equitable society
If we want to create a more equitable society, we must first acknowledge some uncomfortable facts about our city. Only four percent of San Francisco residents are Black — down from 13 percent in 1980. The cost and availability of housing is a big reason for this drastic outmigration of a vital population.
When housing was first built on the sand dune-covered westside from the 1920s to 1940s, it was designed and priced for working class families. But only white families. Nonwhite residents were excluded from buying those affordable homes. That means generations of Black families have not been able to benefit from the transfer of wealth that white families have benefited from as their homes increased in value. Many of the people inheriting a westside home today could not afford to buy it on their own. But they get to stay in San Francisco because their grandparents were allowed to buy property when it was cheap.
By the time restrictions on nonwhite residents were lifted, a new wave of immigrants had arrived in the 1960s. They were able to purchase the homes of a largely Irish population that began moving to the suburbs. But the housing prices were already too high for Black residents who had missed out on multiple generations of property wealth creation. The bulldozing of the vibrant Fillmore neighborhood in the name of “urban renewal” in the 1960s decimated what property ownership Black residents had in San Francisco outside the Bayview district.
Not enough new housing has been built in San Francisco since the 1970s to match population and job growth. Many parts of the city — especially the westside — were down zoned to no longer allow construction of multi-family housing. Now, Sunset homes that cost $50,000 in 1970 are worth $2 million. As housing prices rose, the Black population decreased.
Today, San Francisco is 40 percent white, 35 percent Asian, 15 percent Latinx, six percent mixed race, and four percent Black. Improving San Francisco’s diversity depends on building more housing that a middle income family can afford.
New housing to combat climate change
The largest existential threat to our planet is climate change. While it’s a global problem all nations must address, we should follow the adage to think globally and act locally. That means reducing our carbon footprint by driving less and reducing suburban sprawl. This requires building housing near public transit.
Pollution from automobiles is one of the largest contributors to climate change, but switching entirely to electric cars doesn’t mean we can continue growing the suburbs. The climate crisis can’t wait for the time it will take to transition to zero emission vehicles. General Motors announced it plans to only sell electric cars by 2035, the same year California will stop the sale of gasoline-powered vehicles. Yet many of the gas cars purchased in the final years they are sold will still be on the road in 2050. The planet can’t afford three more decades of the combustible engine.
We need to improve public transportation now and build housing next to it so people can walk and bike more to meet their daily needs.
Paris in the Sunset? The “Dom-i-city” concept provides much-needed housing for seniors and families.
In support of legislation to make it easier to build new housing in San Francisco. Statement by Supervisor Engardio June 30, 2023
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Can a Paris streetscape inspire us to create 10,000 new homes for middle-income families? Dom-i-city is a bold idea that solves land creation, financing, affordability and neighborhood quality of life in ways never considered in San Francisco.
The Westside has good reason to fight an overreaching state law that aims to put apartment buildings next to single-family homes. But what about train corridors like West Portal Avenue and the empty parking lot behind Stonestown Mall? It’s time to build middle-income housing there — if we want to keep families in San Francisco.
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By Joel P. Engardio -- “All my neighbors know people whose children cannot find homes of their own,” said Frank Noto, a senior who has lived in his westside home for 30 years. “Decades of downzoning and anti-housing politics got us where we are today.”
By Joel P. Engardio -- When it comes to things that evoke absolute feelings of love or hate, Airbnb is in the same league as Donald Trump, LeBron James and cilantro. In San Francisco, forces against Airbnb clash with those who swear by the polarizing innovation. There is a solution, but not everyone will like it.
By Joel P. Engardio -- Legislative aide Gary McCoy proved that the human spirit can survive some very dark places when there is a path to realize its full potential. Yet McCoy also proves that simply throwing money at social services is not what saved him.
By Joel P. Engardio -- What do Groundhog Day, the boogeyman, Whack-a-Mole and the phrase “like sand slipping through your fingers” have in common? They illustrate San Francisco’s perpetual housing crisis.
By Joel P. Engardio -- At first glance, this is another sad eviction story in the ongoing saga of San Francisco’s overheated housing market: An elderly Latino couple living in the Mission for 50 years versus millennial newcomers seeking a hip neighborhood. Yet what kind of story is it if the Spanish-speaking grandparents are the ones doing the evicting?
By Joel P. Engardio -- If San Francisco is able to solve its housing crisis and become a city where middle-income families can survive, we might celebrate the day Eugene Lew, 78, learned how to use a MacBook computer in the Apple store at Stonestown Mall.
By Joel P. Engardio -- San Franciscans don’t fear social media because it merely wastes time or reduces privacy. They’re scared of being pushed out by highly paid tech workers who move in, drive up prices and alter the community’s character. As long as these fears persist, there will be voters in San Francisco to fight against market forces and politicians to cater to them.
By Joel P. Engardio -- In an effort to save San Francisco from itself, the Emmy-award winning director behind the PBS hit "Saving the Bay" is producing a new series called "Saving the City." It will highlight successful cities that know what to preserve and what to let go: "Cities change, and if they don't, they die."
By Joel P. Engardio -- Monsters are becoming as ubiquitous as Democrats in San Francisco. Like the million shades of blue that define our Democratic spectrum, multiple monster images now illustrate our housing crisis.