District 5 Supervisor Dean Preston prepares to speak to a crowd of his supporters and constituents at his reelection announcement rally in front of City Hall in San Francisco on Aug. 17. His record on housing could be a key issue in his reelection. Juliana Yamada/Special to the Chronicle
Entering an election year that could turn in part on his housing record, San Francisco Supervisor Dean Preston is touting a new report by supporters finding that he has approved nearly 30,000 homes since he took office in 2020.
Preston and the report argue that critics of his housing record are misinformed about his approach to one of the city’s most intractable problems.
The report states that the overwhelming majority of the homes the supervisor approved through board votes — about 26,000 units — were affordable to lower-income people, and that he also approved $5.5 billion in funding for affordable housing. The report was done by three affordable housing advocates, including two fellow members of the Democratic Socialists of America.
The report, titled “Dean Preston’s Housing Record,” argues that Preston’s record has been misunderstood and is a rebuttal to a 2021 report, “Dean Preston’s Housing Graveyard,” compiled by YIMBY activists that is critical of the District 5 supervisor. Neither report compares Preston’s record to other supervisors or to the total amount of housing proposed.
The dueling reports underscore that Preston has long been at the center of the debate over what it means to be “pro-housing.” YIMBY activists — who advocate for more market-rate housing, middle-class housing for teachers and firefighters, and affordable housing as a means to increase supply and lower prices — have criticized him in the past for not more forcefully embracing market-rate projects across the city.
Critics argue Preston has slowed down important efforts to allow more dense housing in some areas by arguing that this housing will fuel gentrification. They also argue that gentrification is spurred by not building enough market-rate housing, not by building too much.
Preston’s progressive supporters, including tenants rights activists, cite his push to get more affordable units into market-rate projects, which can make those projects less profitable and thus much more difficult to build. Supporters see some of the attacks on Preston as driven by development and real estate interests.
The report comes less than a year before Preston faces reelection, and housing is likely to be a key issue in the race. The Alamo Square resident is facing Bilal Mahmood, a YIMBY advocate and Tenderloin resident, in next year’s election.
The “Graveyard” report that Preston’s supporters are seeking to rebut stated that Preston had opposed development plans and legislative proposals at the city and state level that would have yielded enough units to house more than 28,000 people, including enough affordable housing for nearly 8,500 people.
That total included Preston’s opposition to a state law that, according to the report, could have potentially added homes for almost 20,000 people in his district. The report included housing that did not hinge on Preston’s vote. At the time, Preston pushed back at the report as “one-sided” and “make-believe.”
Also at the time, authors of the “Graveyard” report said they would do similar analyses of other supervisors’ housing records, but they have not done so.
One of the “Graveyard” report’s authors, David Broockman, an associate professor of political science at UC Berkeley, said he had not had time to do similar reports on other supervisors and has instead focused on “housing element advocacy,” referring to the city’s process of getting state approval for its blueprint to build 82,000 homes over eight years.
Harlo Pippenger, one of the new report’s authors and the former campaign manager for the Proposition K affordable housing campaign in 2020, said that though Preston and Pippenger worked together to get that proposition passed, he and others wrote the report without direction from Preston’s office. Preston said in an interview that he did not commission the report. In addition to Pippenger, the report’s authors are Misha Steier, who is a member of the Democratic Socialists, and Hope Williams. The authors described themselves as “housing justice advocates” in the report.
“This report came about because of how disappointed we were in how the … (‘Graveyard’) report was presented,” Pippenger said. “What we did in our report is go through Dean’s actual housing votes: projects that were before the board and affordable housing.”
Pippenger said there has been a concerted effort among YIMBYs to discredit Preston for “his approach … to negotiate for as much affordability as possible” in market-rate projects and for pushing for 100% affordable housing projects when possible.
“It’s a difference of opinion or politics as to whether you’re focused on building as much market rate as possible as opposed to prioritizing housing people can actually afford,” Pippenger said.
Broockman told the Chronicle when asked about the new report that “it’s clear that the current Board of Supervisors will block as much housing as they can.”
Preston’s approach to getting more affordable housing built has also rankled YIMBYs at times. The city can’t afford under current funding to build enough affordable housing, which can cost up to $1.2 million per unit, to meet demand. In San Francisco, developers of market-rate projects must include a certain share of affordable units on-site or pay fees to help boost the number of affordable homes. But forcing market-rate developers to build too many affordable units on site can kill projects, meaning no housing — either affordable or market rate — gets built.
The city recently reduced the share of affordable housing required in some projects because of this problem. Preston was the sole dissenting vote in that change.
The change was meant to help spark construction. Currently, very few market-rate housing projects are getting built in San Francisco because of slow approvals, high fees and construction costs, as well as a general lull in the home-building market due to high interest rates.
Preston, a former tenants rights attorney, said in an interview that he’s “agnostic” about market-rate housing’s role in fixing the city’s affordability crisis and that he is more focused on getting as much affordability as possible out of projects that come before the board. He said he wants to prioritize city-owned land for 100% affordable projects as well as increase local and state funds to build affordable housing, but added that he still approves certain market-rate projects.
Preston said he is not opposed to market-rate housing if it doesn’t displace tenants, isn’t opposed by “vulnerable members of the community” and provides sufficient community benefits as part of the approval. He pointed to a deal for a market-rate tower at 98 Franklin St. near City Hall that he backed.
Preston touts as well his sponsorship of Proposition I, which voters approved in 2020 and doubled the city’s transfer tax on larger real estate projects. The tax has raised more than $300 million in funds for affordable housing but some developers say it has been a significant impediment to getting multifamily market-rate projects built.
The dueling reports both looked at Preston’s vote related to one high-profile project in particular. Preston and eight other supervisors voted in favor of hearing an appeal of a development proposal for 469 Stevenson St., which would have turned a valet parking lot in the South of Market neighborhood into nearly 500 homes, including about 100 affordable units. A state housing agency stepped in to investigate. Mayor London Breed and many housing advocates slammed the supervisors.
Preston said in an interview that he “never opposed that project” but rather granted an environmental appeal.
“We hear tons of CEQA (environmental) appeals, and no one reports on the ones that we deny,” Preston said. “It’s subsequently been approved.”
Developers have argued the appeal delayed the project two years, driving up costs and making it harder to build.
Preston has been a staunch critic of the YIMBY movement for years. He described the “ ‘Graveyard’ report” as a “political hit piece” and “disinformation campaign.”
“This new report not only details my votes but also responds to each of the claims that were made in that report, and the methodology of that original report is just absurd,” Preston said.
The “Graveyard” report also said Preston blocked the building of 8,449 homes at the Hub, around the area of Market Street and Van Ness Avenue. In July 2020, the Board of Supervisors considered a rezoning plan for the area but delayed it, with Preston calling for an “equity” study expected to take six months to make sure low-income residents were not pushed out. But the study was never done, and the full rezoning has not happened yet, according to the Planning Department. Critics say calling for a study that never materialized needlessly delayed rezoning in an area in desperate need of revitalization and at a time when San Francisco needs the property tax increase that comes with new development.
Preston maintains that the study ultimately didn’t have an impact on whether the area was rezoned, and that it would be inaccurate to “tally up units” and claim his office blocked housing there.
For Pippenger, one high-profile project in the Mission is a key example of the kind of housing strategy Preston supports, though he wasn’t in office for much of the time the project was fought over. The so-called Monster in the Mission project could have been a market-rate development with some affordable housing. But supervisors and activists wanted 100% affordable housing at the site and spent years fighting the original project at a time when worries about gentrification in the Mission were high.
The city is now developing all affordable units on the site, but critics said the fight delayed housing at the 16th and Mission BART station for nearly a decade.
For Broockman, author of the original report, the new report is Preston attempting to “not sound anti-housing.” He said Preston has frequently “thrown a wrench” in the process to stop market-rate housing, “even though it’s the vast majority of homes we build.”
“Dean does not have a realistic plan to build as many homes as we could have built if he had not said no to all the homes he had said no to, that’s the simple math of it,” Broockman said.
Pippenger said his report is “more complete” than Broockman’s. Ultimately, Pippenger said Preston prioritizes affordable homes, tenant protections and social housing. Social housing is similar to the affordable housing San Francisco is already building, but it would be built and run by the government instead of the nonprofits the city currently relies on.
“A lot of the differences come down to how you see the role of the market and capitalism in the housing market,” Pippenger said. “Whereas folks like Broockman and the YIMBYs believe that capitalism will provide affordable homes to people if we deregulate, myself, Dean and others don’t see it that way. We think that private developers aren’t interested in providing affordable homes and that we have to look at models outside the market to really achieve that at the levels we need.”
Reach Aldo Toledo: Aldo.Toledo@sfchronicle.com.