[offsign_p]

Does YimbyAction.org support the 'inclusionary housing' permitting requirement cited in above article? (Based on the site, certainly seems so.)

The article describes these mechanisms as the "800-pound gorilla" in what makes development in SF unaffordable (and therefore economically unviable), so having trouble aligning this advocacy with the root cause of the housing shortage.

What am I missing?

[huevosabio]

YA is against the inclusionary housing requirement _as implemented by SF_. It is often used as a type of extortion to outright dissuade new construction.

More broadly, in my experience, Yimbys have mixed-to-negative opinion on inclusionary zoning since it is essentially a tax on new construction, though there are a non-trivial amount of Yimbys who think its a good way to produce subsidized housing.

I personally think we should not be taxing new projects implicitly or explicitly at all, and instead we should use property taxes (especially land value taxes) to subsidize housing either via vouchers or via publicly built housing.

The reality of the CA political system makes all of this very hard to achieve and we often find ourselves settling on taking small but achievable steps.

[fmajid]

It's not one 800lb gorilla but a whole troupe of them mentioned in the article:

- a capricious and arbitrary permitting process

- multiple opportunities for groups to cause mischief, with some like Calle 24 barely disguising that they are shakedown rackets

- excessively restrictive zoning

It essentially boils down to this: there are haves (people who own their own homes like many SF supervisors and like to see them appreciate, and Boomers benefitting from rent control and paying a pittance) who have political power and new entrants who have none. The solution will not come from within, but from the State preempting local control, like Scott Wiener's heroic efforts in Sacramento like SB35. If a housing project is 50% affordable, it can skip most of the rigmarole, as occurred in Potrero Hill:

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/How-one-S-F-housing-p...