City Hall Digest: A Drop in Crime Over the Holidays, and Two Supervisors Want to Sue California

City Hall Digest is TogetherSF Action’s weekly dispatch from San Francisco’s City Hall, broken into bite-sized pieces—because understanding local government is your fundamental right.

Supervisors Want to Sue California Instead of Building New Housing

A few weeks ago, District 1 Supervisor Connie Chan and District 3 Supervisor Aaron Peskin wrote a joint letter to San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu, asking him to file a lawsuit against the state to prevent San Francisco from implementing SB 423, a new state law that makes it easier to build housing.

SB 423, passed by State Senator Scott Wiener in 2023, takes effect this year. It specifically targets cities like San Francisco that are failing to build their share of state-mandated housing, and forces these cities to streamline the approval process for new housing projects. 

Anyone who’s looked for a new home recently knows San Francisco’s housing costs are out of control. San Francisco takes longer to permit new housing projects than any other place in California—the city has created a mess of discretionary reviews and bureaucratic hurdles that take over two years to clear. As a result, new housing isn’t getting built fast enough to keep pace with population growth, which pushes housing costs up as more people compete for fewer homes. 

The status quo isn’t sustainable, and it’s created a housing crisis in San Francisco. As a result, California lawmakers have stepped in, mandating the city build 82,000 units of new housing by 2031. Unfortunately, we’re nowhere close to achieving that goal. With all that in mind, one might think San Francisco’s Supervisors would welcome legislation like SB 423 that makes it easier to build much-needed new housing.

But Supervisors Chan and Peskin have a different agenda. Their letter to City Attorney Chiu makes it clear they’re opposed to any change to San Francisco’s broken housing policy, arguing that the city is being “set up to fail” by building more market-rate housing instead of affordable housing. This all-or-nothing mindset from anti-housing politicians essentially makes the perfect—all affordable housing, all the time—the enemy of the good. Affordable housing is just as expensive to build as market-rate housing, but with less return on investment, so less affordable housing is built than market rate housing—particularly in down market times. By mandating only affordable housing be built, politicians effectively limit the amount of new construction in the city. This is unfortunate, but not surprising from Supervisors Peskin and Chan—both have a long history of trying to block and delay new housing in San Francisco. 

This type of policy from our lawmakers has created a city where a single person can delay or block a new apartment building for years, for almost any reason. Meanwhile, families and working people are being priced out of the city. San Francisco needs to be doing everything possible to work with state guidelines and requirements to build new housing. 

This letter from Supervisors Chan and Peskin is a political stunt, meant to bolster support with the anti-housing faction in San Francisco. We strongly oppose this letter and the supervisors behind it—their obstructionist positions are the reason that San Francisco is in this position to begin with.

Holiday Crime Decline a Good Sign For San Francisco's Future

San Franciscans sick of seemingly never-ending property crime got some good news over the holidays. Between November 20 (the Monday before Thanksgiving) and New Year’s Day, reports of larceny theft like car break-ins and retail theft fell 48 percent from last year. Over the same time period, reported burglaries declined 26 percent, and reports of stolen cars dropped 17 percent. 

This decrease in crime came during one of the busiest shopping seasons in San Francisco. Union Square Park saw an 11 percent increase in unique daily visitors, while transit riders exiting the Powell and Union Square Muni subway stations also increased year over year.

This is excellent news for San Francisco’s beleaguered downtown. Over the last few years, the city has endured a spate of high-profile crime sprees. As San Francisco struggles to recover economically, these crimes have made San Franciscans feel unsafe, and less likely to patronize downtown businesses. Additionally, until now San Francisco’s Police Department has seemingly been unable to stem the rash of auto break-ins, which is one of the most common and frustrating types of crimes San Franciscans deal with. 

But SFPD and Mayor London Breed may have found a solution to this frequent problem. The Mayor’s efforts to increase law enforcement presence have had a significant, positive impact on crime in San Francisco. Car break-ins have been dropping for months now, as police focused on the issue, combining tactics like bait cars, video surveillance, and plainclothes officers to address hot spots for car burglaries. 

This decline in crime over the holidays shows the kind of results that sustained, focused attention from law enforcement can have in San Francisco. It’s encouraging to see effective law enforcement strategies have a positive impact on crime, and we’re extremely supportive of these efforts to keep residents and visitors safe. As San Francisco continues to recover from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the city needs to show that it’s a safe, welcoming place to live, visit, and work. Enhanced law enforcement helps make that possible.