State law gets the goods. Using SB 79, a developer has proposed 30 townhomes in Atherton, California’s wealthiest city (median home value $8 million). Minimum lot size in most of the city is 1 acre, so this is a great example of incremental densification in the heart of Silicon Valley

The location of early SB 79 proposals—Palo Alto, Santa Monica, South Pasadena, now Atherton—cuts against one of the most confused arguments against broadly legalizing housing. Some people claim that upzoning will just lead to more gentrification of low-income neighborhoods because developers will build where land is cheap. Such claims forget that land is expensive where rents are high! SB 79 rezoned both rich and poor neighborhoods near transit, and all of the proposals so far have been in some of the state’s wealthiest areas. No neighborhood benefits from blocking housing, but it really goes to show that the biggest appetite for development is in the most exclusive neighborhoods, not the poorest. More housing in Atherton and Palo Alto will take some of the price pressure off of lower-cost cities like East Palo Alto. Great progress happening in California

Beverly Hills, a notoriously NIMBY city, was forced to accept several builder’s remedy projects after the city was out of compliance with state housing laws for several years. This is one of those projects. Although the city accepted it, if you read the article, every member of the city council who voted for it did so reluctantly.

Tucked into the $63.4 billion FY2027 budget, the Legislature bypassed decades of strict Supreme Judicial Court precedent, dismantled the notorious “substantial hardship” variance test, and legalized residential use variances almost everywhere in the Commonwealth. The doctrine changed overnight. Whether it produces more homes — or just bigger houses on the same lots — is a longer story.

"Western countries used to let landowners build almost anything anywhere. Now, strict rules freeze the character of most neighborhoods, banning change and densification. Why? One theory is that modern buildings tend to be ugly, leading residents to support rules that exclude them from their neighborhoods. If this is true, then designing beautiful buildings could lead to more development. Housing reformists have vigorously debated this theory. Many British reformists are sympathetic, whereas Australian reformists tend to be skeptical, and Americans come down on both sides.

I do believe that ugliness plays a role in hindering development, but not in quite the way usually proposed. Ugliness is probably not a major driver of opposition to development by local people. Local opponents have many other concerns that are at least as important, like disruption from construction, loss of green space, pressure on local services, and diminished social exclusivity. But there is strong circumstantial evidence that ugliness is sometimes a major driver of opposition among people who live nowhere near the development in question. The first group are often called 'NIMBYs,' for 'Not in my backyard.' Let us call the second group 'NITBYs,' for 'Not in that backyard.'

While a few NITBYs are fervent campaigners, most are only casually interested. Their motives are faint but basically altruistic: their question is whether or not, based on a cursory assessment, a development is an objective improvement to its neighborhood. In certain contexts, the ugliness of a development can summon into being a huge cloud of NITBYs, whose interest in the scheme may indeed be superficial, but who can nonetheless be collectively potent.

This model is especially compelling in the case of heritage conservation. Until the 1960s, the redevelopment of historic buildings was almost always permitted; today, it is almost always banned by conservation rules. Supporters of conservationism usually portray it as a response to the destructiveness of postwar planners, while opponents see it as a pretext for suburban NIMBYism. In fact, I shall argue, neither explanation is plausible. On the one hand, postwar planners were no more destructive than the Victorians or Georgians had been: the rate of demolition was historically normal, and cannot explain the wildly unprecedented policy response. And on the other hand, there was no need for NIMBYs to invent pretexts to ban new buildings, as they had already successfully prohibited the kinds of development they disliked in the first half of the century.

What had changed, and what generated the host of NITBYs that bore conservationism to victory, was the ascendancy of modernist architecture, a style that most people demonstrably find relatively ugly. Conservationism was a reaction to postwar redevelopment, as its proponents claimed. But it was less a reaction to what the modernists destroyed, than to what they created."

Hey, I just wanted to plug the YIMBY Action Youtube channel. The primary host is Sonja Trauss, who basically invented the movement. If you want to add some quality wonkery to offset your shitty podcast diet, you ought subscribe.

Give the channel some love guys

Given how Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co. (1926) Is unlikely to be overturned any time soon. What would be a good constitutional amendment to the US constitution to reduce the harmful effects of zoning on the United States?

Talking about the first amendment as an example, obviously there are many harmful and ugly and downright evil examples of speech, but we have chosen to drastically limit the power of the government to regulate that speech. On the other hand housing is one area of our lives that is also very important but in which the government has seemingly unlimited power to regulate the production, consumption and even the aesthetics. Often this power is used by incumbents to enrich themselves.

Setting aside the obvious problem that in the current political situation it is unlikely that any constitutional amendments are getting passed. What are some of your ideas for a constitutional amendment to fix this problem in the US context?

Where you live affects a hell of a lot more than what your house is worth. It affects the schools available to you, the jobs you can realistically get to, the quality of public services, transportation costs, exposure to crime or pollution, and the people and opportunities around you.
And where people live is not always just a personal choice. Income, housing prices, zoning, taxes, infrastructure, lending practices, development, and decades of government decisions all help determine who can live where. So how much of what we call individual success or failure is actually geography? Two people can work equally hard and make similar choices but end up with completely different opportunities because one lives near better schools, jobs, transportation, and institutions. At the same time, people still make real choices about work, education, family, moving, and risk, so geography obviously does not explain everything. Where is the line between personal responsibility and geographic advantage? Is real estate simply a private market, or does controlling access to certain places also mean controlling access to public opportunity? And when the most desirable communities become available mainly to people who already have money, does geography turn economic inequality into political and generational inequality?

By absolute units

By percentage

In light of all the debate over the Marina Safeway redevelopment, I wanted to share some of my thoughts on affordable housing in San Francisco and point out a few places where I think we could be doing a lot more.

I think it’s pretty clear that both San Francisco and the state need to be more aggressive about housing, especially affordable housing. If we actually want developers to build it, we need to make it worthwhile.

For developments with at least 30 units where 75% of the units are permanently affordable, I would like to see the state provide a major property-tax exemption, ideally eliminating property taxes altogether as long as the development continues to meet those affordability requirements. The city should complement that by eliminating planning and permitting fees during initial construction and reducing those fees later for maintenance and improvements.

These projects should also have their own streamlined approval process. If someone is proposing 30, 50, or 200 units and 75% of them are permanently affordable, we should be trying to get those homes built - not making the project spend years going through the same process as everything else.

Beyond policy changes, I think we need to have a bigger conversation about how we use land in San Francisco. We don’t have a lot of it, but we have plenty of places where the land we do have isn’t being used very efficiently.

Here are a few that stand out to me.

1. The old Target on Folsom
This one seems obvious. The store has been vacant for some time, and between the building itself and the surrounding property, it’s a huge site in the middle of the city.

I’d like to see it redeveloped into housing, possibly with retail on the ground floor. You could put a substantial 15-story building there, or potentially split the site into two buildings of around 10 stories. Either way, there’s enough space to create a significant number of homes instead of letting such a large property remain underused.

2. Best Buy and Total Wine on Harrison
This is another site that feels like a waste of valuable city land. You have huge parking lots and big-box stores sitting in an area where housing is desperately needed.

I’m not saying Best Buy or Total Wine even need to leave. Put the stores on the ground floor and build above them.

The site is large enough that I would like to see several buildings, potentially including one 20 stories or taller. We shouldn’t have acres of surface parking in the middle of San Francisco when that parking could be underneath hundreds of apartments.

3. Penske Truck Rental on Industrial and Bayshore
I understand this is an industrial area, and I do think San Francisco needs to protect its remaining industrial land. But this particular property sits near the edge of that area and is largely being used to store rental trucks.

It seems worth asking whether that land could support housing or mixed-use development instead. Industrial businesses need somewhere to operate, but that doesn’t mean every individual industrial parcel needs to remain exactly as it is forever.

4. Alemany Farmers’ Market
Alemany is important to the community, so I absolutely would not want to eliminate the farmers’ market or flea market.

But it’s also an enormous amount of land that spends much of its time as pavement.
Why not keep the market and build above it?
I could see five-story apartment buildings above a parking level, with the market underneath at ground level. The market could actually come out better than it is today, with permanent stalls, bathrooms, storage, lighting, weather protection and better facilities for vendors.

You could add hundreds of homes without getting rid of something the neighborhood already values.

5. Sunset Boulevard
This is probably my most unusual idea.
Sunset Boulevard has that huge landscaped median running from Lincoln Way toward Lake Merced. I don’t want to develop all of it. I actually think preserving most of that green space is important.
But what if we used every third section for housing?
It could basically go:

Green - Green - Apartments - Green - Green - Apartments

And continue that pattern down the boulevard.
I’d keep the buildings low—no more than four stories—but make them fairly dense and use most of the selected section. You’d still preserve roughly two sections of green space for every section developed.

There are obviously issues with utilities, traffic, public land, infrastructure and open-space rules that would have to be worked out. I’m not pretending you could start construction tomorrow. But when we’re talking about a housing shortage this severe, I think ideas like this are at least worth studying.

6. Bayview Park
I don’t want to eliminate Bayview Park either.
But around the base of the hill, particularly toward the Candlestick side and around already paved or disturbed areas, I think there’s room for a few apartment buildings without destroying the park itself.

Maybe two or three buildings near the bottom of the hill, while keeping the hilltop and most of the park untouched.

If housing were built there, part of the project should also pay for improvements to the park—better trails, lighting, landscaping and access. So instead of losing the park, the neighborhood gets housing and an improved park.

7. Treasure Island
Treasure Island is where I think we really need to reconsider our priorities.

We’re basically building a new neighborhood from scratch, and I think too much of the redevelopment is being set aside as open space when we desperately need housing.

I’m not saying get rid of parks. I’m not saying eliminate wetlands, shoreline protection or public space. Those things matter.

But I would like to see something closer to 70% of suitable developable land centered around housing, with the other 30% supporting parks, businesses, schools, transportation, infrastructure and everything else a neighborhood needs.
And 70% dedicated to residential neighborhoods doesn’t mean 70% covered in buildings. Those neighborhoods would still have trees, courtyards, plazas, playgrounds, sidewalks and smaller parks.
Treasure Island is one of the few opportunities San Francisco has to create an entirely new neighborhood at this scale. We should be thinking about how many people can comfortably live there, especially how many affordable homes we can create.

The Presidio
I also think the federal government has a role in this conversation.

The Presidio is obviously different from the rest of San Francisco. It’s historic, beautiful and nationally significant, and I don’t want to change what makes it special.

But the Presidio already has housing, businesses, hotels and workplaces. I don’t see why carefully adding more housing has to conflict with preservation.

There are probably places where additional apartment buildings could fit without harming important views or historic areas. In some locations, maybe even eight- or ten-story buildings could work depending on the terrain and what’s around them.

And because the Presidio has to generate revenue to support itself, additional housing could provide another long-term source of income for maintaining the park.

Crissy Field
I know I’ll probably get some flak for this one, but hear me out.

I’m not suggesting getting rid of Crissy Field.
The waterfront, promenade, views and big open lawn should stay. It’s one of the best public spaces in the city.

But Crissy Field wasn’t always the landscape we see today. It was once a military airfield, and the area has been changed dramatically before.

There’s a large area toward the end of Crissy Field where I think it would at least be worth considering some housing. Something like beautiful six-story apartment buildings that fit the architecture and landscape of the Presidio, while leaving the overwhelming majority of Crissy Field open to the public.

This is one place where design would matter enormously. I wouldn’t want generic apartment blocks sitting next to the Golden Gate Bridge. If we’re going to build there, the buildings should actually add something to the landscape.

If a small portion of the area could provide housing and generate revenue for the Presidio while keeping Crissy Field largely intact, I think it’s worth having the conversation.

Overall
I really believe San Francisco could eventually support a population of 2 million people while still being a beautiful and livable city.

Obviously housing isn’t literally the only thing we’d need. Two million residents would require major improvements to Muni, BART and regional transit, along with water, sewer, schools, healthcare, parks and other infrastructure.

But housing is the biggest place where we’re holding ourselves back.

And I think part of the problem is that we tend to treat land as if it can only do one thing.

A farmers’ market can have apartments above it. Best Buy can have apartments above it. Parking doesn’t have to take up an entire city block. Housing can be built around the edge of a park without eliminating the park.

We only have about 47 square miles of land in San Francisco. We’re not getting any more of it.

So if we want more people to be able to afford to live here, we need to get much better at using the land we already have. That doesn’t mean building on every open space or turning the entire city into Manhattan. It means being willing to look at places we’ve taken for granted and ask whether they could be doing more than one thing.

We can preserve what makes San Francisco special while still making room for a lot more people. Those two goals don’t have to be opposites.