I’ll never forget a 2017 Uber Pool ride. I ended up next to a fresh-out-of-college software engineer who had just moved to San Francisco. We got to talking, and at some point, he asked me what I was “doing here.”

I told him I was an architect.

He paused. “Oh, like a cloud architect?”

“No. An actual architect.”

“You mean, like, buildings?”

“Yes.”

And that was it. He just stared, confused that anyone in San Francisco was building physical things instead of software.

That exchange sums up the city in the 2010s: everything was digital first, real-world second. Apps were the new architecture. Reality was a sandbox you could bend, or bulldoze, if it got in the way of scaling.

The App Era: Move Fast, Break the City

Uber, Airbnb, Lime, TaskRabbit, Postmates. The so-called “sharing economy” was born here, but “sharing” was mostly a euphemism for avoiding regulations.

• Uber thrived because taxis were a cartel with terrible service, protected by a medallion system that strangled supply. The app blew that up.

• Airbnb started as a couple of guys renting out air mattresses for conference-goers who couldn’t find hotel rooms. Within a few years, it was a global hotel-killer, and the target of tenant groups and city councils everywhere.

Both companies, and their peers, rode a wave of bottomless venture capital, the rise of the smartphone, and a political climate that was too slow to react. By the time regulators mobilized, the companies had scaled to the point of inevitability.

Tech vs. San Francisco

The tension wasn’t just economic. It was cultural.

San Francisco wasn’t a blank canvas before the boom. It was a place with its own history, politics, and community fabric. And that fabric started tearing. Google buses were vandalized. Protesters screamed about “tech bros” gentrifying the Mission.

Kim-Mai Cutler’s 2014 piece in TechCrunch nailed it: SF is a “semi-sovereign city,” progressive politics obsessed less with creating wealth and more with protecting the city from wealth’s side effects. Old San Francisco saw itself as defending character, culture, and control. New San Francisco wanted disruption at any cost.

Mayor Ed Lee tried to bridge the gap with the famous “Twitter Tax Break,” luring tech companies into the derelict Mid-Market corridor. For a while, it worked. Twitter, Uber, Square, Dolby, Zendesk, and others moved in. Restaurants, cafés, and small businesses followed. But activists saw it as an invasion, not revitalization. The city’s political establishment treated tech like a goose laying golden eggs while quietly sharpening the knife.

The Housing Wars

From 2012 to 2017, San Francisco felt like it was booming again after the Great Recession. Optimism was everywhere. But prosperity came with a catch: housing.

Prices skyrocketed. A new political movement, YIMBY (“Yes In My Backyard”), emerged, arguing for more housing construction. Tech embraced it quickly. Activists fought back just as fiercely, framing it as a cover for greedy developers destroying neighborhoods.

Housing became the defining political issue of the decade. Moderates wanted market solutions. Progressives wanted subsidies and restrictions. Neither side had the vision, or the competence, to actually build enough homes.

Instead, billions of tax dollars flowed into nonprofits that maintained the crisis rather than solving it. The result: no one won, and the city kept losing.

Death by a Thousand Cuts

By the late 2010s, San Francisco was fraying.

Street conditions deteriorated. Chesa Boudin was elected DA on a decarceration platform, fueling lawlessness. The School Board prioritized renaming schools over improving them. It felt like the city was more interested in symbolism than substance.

Then COVID hit. Lockdowns drained downtown. Tech workers fled, many for good. The golden goose of the 2010s was dead, not because of a grand conspiracy, but because of a perfect storm of incompetence, infighting, and inertia.

Can San Francisco Recover?

The city has been here before, booms followed by busts, waves of prosperity followed by backlash. But this one feels different. Remote work hollowed out downtown. Tax revenues shrank. The political machine doubled down on dysfunction instead of reform.

And yet, this is San Francisco. Reinvention is in its DNA. Whether the next boom is AI, biotech, or something we cannot see yet, the city has the raw ingredients to thrive again. The question is whether its leadership, and its people, are willing to learn from the 2010s.

Because if they’re not, the next Uber Pool conversation won’t just be awkward. It will be a cautionary tale.

This essay originally appeared in the Future Cities Project publication “Five Critical Essays on EDI”. The full booklet can be downloaded here: Five Critical Essays on EDI

The American Institute of Architects’ (AIA) claims that: ‘As part of a global community, AIA is building a culture of equity, diversity, and inclusion to build a better future for everyone. We’re moving justice and equity decisively from aspiration to action.’

The AIA is the premier professional organization for architects in the United States, boasting over 100,000 members. Its mission is to advocate for the architectural profession and highlight the significance of exceptional design at national, state, and local levels. However, in recent years, the AIA and the architecture profession have strayed from their core mission, becoming increasingly fixated on what can best be described as a religious zeal for projecting virtue.

In this shift, the emphasis has transitioned from promoting exceptional design and securing additional projects for architects, to prioritizing ‘equity, diversity, and inclusion’ in its advocacy efforts. This pivot toward EDI initiatives is not an isolated phenomenon within the architecture profession; rather, it refects a broader response to a wave of fervour that permeated nearly all mainstream American institutions following the civil unrest of 2020.

The AIA is not alone in this deviation. Since 2020, EDI considerations have overwhelmingly dominated academic discourse in American architecture schools, yielding to the pressures of outspoken ‘woke’ advocates within the field. For instance, Harvard Graduate School of Design’s recent lecture series features events celebrating ‘International Womxn’s Day’ and ‘Designing for Abolition.’ Moreover, last year, the Harvard GSD Student Forum passed a resolution calling for the university to divest from ‘institutions and organizations that provide material assistance or support for the ongoing occupation of Palestine.’

It is perhaps not surprising that the architecture profession is prone to what some call ‘progressive politics’ or what other observers might call ‘do-gooder syndrome’. This field attracts individuals who genuinely aspire to positively impact the world through design. Before the rise of EDI there were other political initiatives to take our mind of actually designing stuff. Back then, architects’ primary focus was on combatting climate change through sustainable building practices. While prioritizing energy efficiency, human comfort, and resilience against natural disasters are essential, striving for sustainability has often overshadowed fundamental aspects, such as creating aesthetically pleasing buildings.

How did architecture evolve to be perceived as a vehicle for social justice advocacy? What has become of the Vitruvian principles of strength, utility, and beauty? A closer examination reveals that the growing emphasis on critical social justice within the field of architecture is a natural progression emerging from the disillusionment that followed Modernism.

Deconstructing Narratives

While Modernism sought to establish architecture’s dominance by showcasing the technological advancements of the 20th century, its disregard for historical context in favor of a tabula rasa approach appears, in hindsight, to have been a significant oversight. Whether we recognize it or not, we are all part of a historical continuum. The repercussions of failed states arising from revolutionary zeal, particularly in Communist movements, serve as a poignant reminder of the perils associated with abandoning historical narratives.

Post-modernism sought to re-establish a connection with history, but it often approached this endeavor with a sense of cynicism. The playful references to Classical architecture could be charming at times, yet they frequently came across as contrived. Deconstructivism intensifed the ongoing identity crisis in architecture by deliberately disrupting the coherence of building elements and embracing a sense of disorder. Architect Peter Eisenman, a leading practitioner of Deconstructivism, noted, ‘The architecture we remember is that which never consoles or comforts us.’

Another key figure in the movement, Bernard Tschumi, took this perspective even further, dismissing the non-architect public by stating that ‘they will almost always stand behind the traditionalists. In the public eye, architecture is about comfort, shelter, about bricks and mortar.’ Since when has architecture not been about comfort, shelter, bricks, and mortar? These elements are fundamental.

What connection does Deconstructivism, which rose to prominence in architectural academia during the 1980s, have with Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in the profession today? The answer lies in the intellectual framework followed by Deconstructivist architects like Eisenman and Tschumi, heavily influenced by French postmodern philosophers such as Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Jean-François Lyotard.

As the book, Cynical Theories explains, ‘these ‘critical theorists’ rejected the ‘Enlightenment values that emphasized beliefs in objective knowledge, universal truth, science as a means of obtaining objective understanding, the power of reason, the potential for straightforward communication through language, a universal human nature, and individualism.’ The authors, Lindsay and Pluckrose further discuss how this rejection of Enlightenment principles evolved into what they term ‘Social Justice scholarship’:

‘In Social Justice scholarship, we continually read that patriarchy, white supremacy, imperialism, cisnormativity, heteronormativity, ableism, and fatphobia are literally structuring society and infecting everything.’

So, in essence, by ‘deconstructing’ Enlightenment values, the critical theorists opened the door for social justice activists to hijack Western institutions. For the architecture profession, this hard pivot toward insular nihilism profoundly damaged the prestige and relevance it once held in public consciousness. This is deeply ironic, given that the architectural academics of the post-modern era leveraged their writing and research to try and elevate architecture as a distinguished and esteemed discipline. In reality, it had the opposite effect, alienating the public with esoteric jargon and illegible buildings.

Although Modern Architecture never quite lived up to its lofty ideals, the cynicism that followed further detached the profession from its essential functions. After Postmodernism fell out of fashion, the Western architectural historical canon was again relegated to the sidelines. As we approached the turn of the Millennium, mainstream architectural discourse became dominated by the ‘Bilbao Effect’, referring to the surge in tourism experienced by the Basque region’s largest city after the opening of Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in 1997.

For a moment, this made architecture sexy again in the public eye as dazzling sculptural buildings caught the attention of civic leaders worldwide who desired a similar magical impact on their post-industrial, derelict economies. Hebert Muschamp, the New York Times Architecture Critic from 1992 – 2004, was the leading advocate and promoter for what became known as ‘Starchitecture’ (he once referred to the Guggenheim Bilbao as ‘the reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe’). In addition to Gehry, he championed rising global celebrity architects like Rem Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid, Jean Nouvel, and others who designed buildings with pizazz: buildings that looked striking in aerial photos.

While this was excellent public relations for architecture, an underlying perceived vacuousness made many in the profession (especially in academic circles) crave more substance and meaning. However, instead of returning to architecture’s foundational roots, the profession strayed even further from the art of building.

The Architect as Activist

While celebrity architecture dominated mainstream design discourse, critical theory transitioned from an academic thought experiment into practical application. This evolution first manifested in architecture as an increasing awareness of sustainability or ‘green design’. Although environmental activism had been present since the ‘60s and ‘70s, it was not until the early 2000s that a predominant view emerged, acknowledging the construction industry as a primary contributor to ‘global warming’ (variously referred to as ‘climate change’) due to carbon emissions generated both during construction and throughout the lifecycle of buildings.

Concerns about global climate change provided architects a perfect opportunity to reframe the profession as heroic and environmentally conscious. Emerging green building rating systems such as LEED and BREEAM established frameworks enabling architects and builders to demonstrate to investors and the public that their designs not only minimized environmental harm but also contributed positively to addressing the issue. Sustainability also gave rise to a novel industry niche within the building professions dedicated to monitoring, tracking, and analyzing green building objectives.

Sustainability is now widely embraced within the profession and is integral to most mainstream architectural practices. To be sure, the green building movement has introduced many genuinely beneficial principles to the profession: designing spaces for human health and comfort, enhancing energy and water efficiency, and acknowledging adaptive reuse as an exciting creative challenge. Nonetheless, underpinning the green building movement is a pervasive and often unspoken sense of guilt regarding the perceived conflict between human construction activities and environmental sustainability.

This sentiment suggests that any form of resource consumption, energy expenditure, or embodied carbon utilization constitutes a fundamental transgression against ecological integrity. Concerns about resource scarcity have led to the implementation of stringent land-use regulations and burdensome building codes. Such a scarcity mindset often stifles architectural creativity and is contrary to celebrating the human spirit.

Sustainability has become associated with what is known as ‘Environmental, Social, and Governance’ (ESG) – a corporate investing principle that prioritizes what it says on the tin. While sustainability is reflected in the ‘E’ component, it is the ‘S’ where EDI has thrived. With the rise of EDI, it is no longer enough to design environmentally-sustainable projects – they must also have a social impact.

Unfortunately, ‘social impact’ is considerably more nebulous and challenging to quantify than sustainability goals (which are primarily based on building science). In the context of the architecture profession, ‘social impact’ is often less a reflection of actual architecture and more connected to peripheral factors such as building type (is it something socially beneficial like subsidized housing?), site location (is it situated in an underserved community?), and the client (is it a government agency or a non-profit?). This consideration can also extend to the architects themselves (are they from an ‘underrepresented group’?).

By focusing solely on EDI and ‘social impact,’ architecture gives up its authority to social justice activists, who take on the roles of judge, jury, and executioner in deciding whether a project (and its architect) merit recognition. As a result, undertaking development work for for-profit developers is seen as tainted, and collaborating with clients in certain developing countries is regarded as suspect. Moreover, and perhaps most importantly, EDI undermines the architect’s role as an authority in building design.

Architecture: That’s the Point

When asked about their favorite kind of architecture, most people tend to mention classic European cities like Florence, Paris, or Vienna. Although they may struggle to articulate exactly what makes these places so appealing, they have an instinctual sense that these cities are unique—truly works of art. Many Americans often reflect upon returning home from their European holiday, asking themselves, ‘Why don’t we build like that anymore?’ Architects will often roll their eyes at this question and then proceed to launch into detailed explanations about the evolution of building techniques and the economic realities of 21st-century construction.

Nevertheless, the question remains pertinent: It doesn’t matter how diverse the workforce or how egalitarian the hiring practices, if architects are unable to design beautiful buildings that inspire and uplift the human spirit, what is the true purpose of our profession? It is essential that we shift our focus away from social trends and recommit to the foundational values of our field.

American architects may have some help from the top in this matter. On the first day of the new White House Administration, President Trump signed the ‘Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture’ executive order, which aims to promote the use of ‘traditional and classical’ architecture for civic buildings. Specifically, the order states that ‘Federal public buildings should be visually identifiable as civic buildings and respect regional, traditional, and classical architectural heritage to uplift and beautify public spaces.’ Sounds reasonable. Coincidently, the order overlapped with another executive order ending all EDI programs across the Federal Government, deeming them wasteful and discriminatory.

The AIA unsurprisingly came out against President Trump’s executive order, stating that it is ‘extremely concerned about any revisions that remove control from local communities or mandate official federal design preferences that hinder design freedom.’ Yet this statement directly contradicts the executive order’s language, which explicitly says that public buildings should respect regional, traditional, and classical architectural heritage.

The effects of the executive order remain to be seen. Nevertheless, rather than hastily condemning it, the AIA and the architecture profession should take into account the motivations behind the President’s decision to issue it, along with its considerable popularity among the American public. It may be that the best route for architecture to reclaim its relevance lies not in navel-gazing introspection or superficial displays of Critical Social Justice, but in rediscovering its traditional and classical foundations.

This essay originally appeared in the Future Cities Project publication “Five Critical Essays on EDI”. The full booklet can be downloaded here: Five Critical Essays on EDI

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Unfortunately, tent encampments are common in downtown Los Angeles these days

If there is one thing Californians agree on, it is that we have to do something about the inhumane drug addiction and mental health crisis proliferating across our cities and towns. The situation is dire for those most in need of help, and the status quo costs the state and local governments billions while having little to show for it. Furthermore, the crisis undermines public safety by straining local fire departments, law enforcement agencies and other emergency response resources.

Although widespread acknowledgment exists that the current approach needs to be improved, there is no consensus on the best path forward. For example, one popular strategy among homeless advocates, “Housing First,” is based on the idea that everyone living on the streets is entitled to permanent housing, even before addressing any outstanding mental health or addiction issues. While this sounds nice in theory, in practice, “Housing First” is a classic example of putting the cart before the horse concerning treatment, recovery and, ultimately, housing stabilization.

This is not to suggest that housing isn’t a critical piece of the puzzle in solving California’s homeless crisis – it is. Let me be clear in stating that I strongly support policies that encourage housing development of all types – including rent-stabilized and permanent supportive housing. Lowering the cost of housing is also a critical factor in ensuring folks don’t end up homeless in the first place.

But the problem with “Housing First” is that it prioritizes permanent housing without considering the steps one needs to take before safely and responsibly living in a stable housing situation. In other words, “Housing First,” by deprioritizing drug treatment and transitional shelter, lets perfect be the enemy of good.

Inhumane Living Conditions

If one needs evidence that housing alone is insufficient in addressing drug addiction and mental health, one needs to look no further than this alarming deep dive by the Los Angeles Times into the collapse of the Skid Row Housing Trust.

Once a darling of local LA media and homeless advocates, the Skid Row Housing Trust was a non-profit housing provider that owned and operated over two dozen residential buildings in Downtown Los Angeles. But, according to the LA Times piece, a series of managerial failings and poor financial decisions led the Trust’s Board of Directors to vote to break up the organization last October.

Underlying the mismanagement of the Skid Row Housing Trust’s residential portfolio was a situation in which basic building maintenance became next to impossible due to ongoing damage and destruction by some residents. According to the LA Times piece:

“Added to that structural challenge is a policy shift of the past decade giving priority for housing to people who have been homeless the longest, have mental and physical health conditions and often substance use disorder. Wear and tear on apartments suffers accordingly, building operators say, potentially creating a downward spiral in which damaged units cannot be reoccupied, cutting into the building’s rental revenue.”

In San Francisco, non-profit housing providers face similar challenges. As Randy Shaw, Director of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, explained in a 2022 San Francisco Chronicle article:

“We throw all these people into our hotels who have no demonstrated ability to live independently, who have severe problems and need to be elsewhere.”

In the same Chronicle piece, UCSF researcher and supportive housing expert Margot Kushel adds:

“We’re shooting ourselves in the foot - we can’t house people who are incredibly high-risk and not give them the services they need. It will not work.”

San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood, where the city’s non-profit homeless service providers and single-room occupancy (SRO) buildings are concentrated. Photo credit: Gabe Pierce

Housing Without Guardrails

During the COVID-19 pandemic, San Francisco used federal funding to house over 3,700 high-risk residents in 25 hotels. While the primary reason for this program was the closure of homeless shelters to prevent the spread of the COVID virus, it was also a de-facto trial run for the “Housing First” no-questions-asked approach to housing the city’s homeless population.

As expected, the results of the shelter-in-place program were less than ideal. Although the program ended in late 2022, the City of San Francisco is now on the hook for $26 million in property damage and faces multiple lawsuits from hotel owners. Nevertheless, city officials defend the program as successful in preventing the spread of COVID among the city’s most vulnerable populations - but the program highlights the need for behavioral standards and guardrails for anyone granted a publicly-subsidized housing unit.

“Housing First” and homeless advocates may argue that requiring standards of behavior is asking too much of folks in the depths of severe drug addiction or mental health crises. And it may very well be the case that individuals in these circumstances don’t have much agency over their compulsions and addictions. But moving someone from a tent on the street into a hotel room doesn’t address the root cause of addiction or mental illness.

In many cases, this makes it harder for homeless folks to put their lives together and continue on the straight and narrow. It also makes it impossible for housing service providers to maintain their buildings under constant assault. Without guardrails, this vicious cycle will continue indefinitely into the future.

A Vicious Cycle of Perverse Incentives

Over the years, it has become clear that one of the most significant barriers to solving California’s homeless crisis is not the amount of money the state spends but how and where it allocates its resources. For example, in San Francisco and Los Angeles, homeless service providers, drug treatment facilities and low-income transitional housing options are primarily concentrated in specific areas of the city (Skid Row in Los Angeles and the Tenderloin/SoMa in San Francisco). There are several reasons for this, including a history of disinvestment in central city areas after WWII and run-of-the-mill NIMBYism preventing services from being spread out and distributed.

What makes matters worse is that illicit open-air drug markets operate with impunity in these areas. Without the political will to shut down these markets, those struggling with hard drugs living in these neighborhoods will succumb to a lifetime of addiction and eventual overdose, regardless if they live on the street or in a single-room occupancy (SRO) unit. The drug markets also attract new clientele from other cities and states, creating an even higher demand for housing and services.

This has created perverse incentives not only for the homeless folks living in these areas but for the service providers as well. Because non-profit organizations administer homelessness and drug treatment services, there is little accountability or oversight into their spending of public dollars. As a result, promoting policies like “Housing First” allows them to appear virtuous while demanding increasingly more money for solutions that go nowhere.

It’s Time to Consider Alternatives

While it is clear that the current approach is failing, there are few viable alternatives to the status quo. When properly managed, permanent supportive housing is probably one of the best options for those needing ongoing mental health care, but it is prohibitively expensive (especially in urban markets where land and development are costly). And when permanent supportive housing is located adjacent to open-air drug markets, it makes it nearly impossible for those in recovery not to be tempted to fall back into their former habits.

One option is for the state to reassert control over California’s mental health infrastructure instead of delegating everything to local cities and counties. This might include developing supportive housing communities in areas far away from the Tenderloin or Skid Row, where folks can live closer to nature and avoid the risk of relapse. These would be places built to allow folks to live with dignity through ongoing programs like gardening, art classes and other activities.

Unfortunately, even suggesting something like this conjures the specter of yesteryear's inhumane “mental asylums” immortalized in films like “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” Nevertheless, we must accept that this is ancient history and move forward with a new model.

The first step is reforming the 1967 Lanterman-Petris-Short (LPS) Act, which set the stage for deinstitutionalization but left (and still leaves) California’s most vulnerable fending for themselves. Reforming the LPS Act would also help strengthen the state’s conservatorship laws- something both San Francisco Mayor London Breed and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan recently expressed support for.

The next step is reallocating the resources from downtown non-profit services into these new permanent supportive housing communities outside of city centers. Instead of the “Housing First” approach (which lacks accountability by design), the supportive housing community approach would have ground rules and guidelines for behavior (both for residents and staff). In addition, the money saved by defunding fundamentally broken service providers like the Skid Row Housing Trust could be used to hire and train additional mental health professionals and addiction counselors.

To be sure, none of these suggestions is a silver bullet. The overlapping crises of homelessness, mental health and drug addiction are entrenched across the state. But unless we pivot and try new approaches, it is guaranteed that we will continue on the same path toward even worse outcomes for our fellow Californians who need our help more than ever.

Does this look like a single-family home? Although designed at “house-scale”, this project is actually a four-unit development on a typical 7,500 sq. ft. lot (Design by the Author)

Amidst the backdrop of California's high-profile gubernatorial recall election, COVID variant resurgence and school re-opening drama is yet another raging debate over the state's ongoing housing crisis.

To be sure, this debate predates the pandemic by nearly a decade but has now reached a boiling point due in large part to the heightened awareness of the importance of home as foundational to a healthy and fulfilling life. As a result, we've spent more time within the confines of home over the past year than we probably ever expected to and now understand just how big of a role it plays in our day-to-day existence.

Contrary to the misconception that the pandemic caused a mass exodus of residents from California to other states, recent research from the University of California found no evidence of this.

The report clarifies that much of the movement has been within and around California rather than from the state. For instance, while San Francisco saw a significant year-over-year loss in population, other parts of the state like the greater Sacramento area and even further east into the foothills saw a substantial influx of new residents.

Although San Francisco lost population during the pandemic, other parts of the state such as the greater Sacramento area continue to grow (Photo by Aiden Frazier)

The desire for more spacious living accommodations and open spaces makes total sense, given the realities of lockdowns and workplace closures we've had to live with over the past year and a half.

But, unfortunately, this population adjustment has not come without its own set of challenges and unintended consequences. For example, Californians who fled expensive coastal areas for the interior also brought with them skyrocketing real estate prices thanks to insatiable housing demand.

Not only has the coastal California housing crisis gone statewide, but more folks than ever are now living in high-fire danger "wildland-urban interface" (WUI) areas. While there are certainly benefits to living in WUI zones (more space & privacy, beautiful scenery), the tradeoff comes down to one's tolerance for annual wildfires (and willingness to pay for high fire insurance premiums).

Fortunately, there is a middle ground between living in a dense urban area like San Francisco or out in a wildfire-prone WUI zone: living in one of California's hundreds of mid-size post-WWII suburbs.

You've heard their names even if you can't conjure a mental picture of what they look like individually: Sunnyvale, West Covina, Novato, Torrance, Pleasanton, Chula Vista, Fullerton, Citrus Heights, Santa Clarita (the list goes on). Dominated by single-family homes and commercial strip malls (and, if fortunate, centered around a pre-WWII walkable downtown retail corridor), they were built to facilitate the nuclear family and middle-class wealth building.

Aerial view of a typical post-WWII neighborhood in Orange County, California. How can we add new housing without changing the fundamental character of this type of neighborhood, ubiquitous throughout the state? (Photo by Neal Johnson)

For Baby Boomers, the development of post-WWII California suburbia was a considerable boon, ushering in a golden age of growth and economic prosperity for the state. Hundreds of thousands of Californians were able to raise prosperous families and build wealth through home equity. In addition, stable middle-class jobs afforded them a quality of life never seen in human history. This period of growth became the new standard for the cultural myth known as the "California Dream."

Of course, the picture was not always as rosy as it seemed on the surface. For instance, California's African Americans were often shut out from homeownership due to discriminatory policies like redlining and the inability to qualify for mortgage loans. From the Santa Clara Valley to the San Gabriel Valley, some of the world's most prime topsoil was paved over for parking lots and freeways.

Parts of the state, especially the greater Los Angeles area, became synonymous with traffic jams and air pollution. And over time, the reliable blue-collar jobs in manufacturing that built the post-WWII middle class left the state for overseas, never to return.

Through a spirit of innovation and a concentration of talent, California's economy adapted, evolving into the world's premier post-industrial powerhouse. Los Angeles strengthened as the cultural and economic hub for film, TV and the music industry. At the same time, the Bay Area's Silicon Valley went from building computer hardware to designing computer software.

With the productive coastal agricultural land occupied by suburban sprawl, most of the state's agricultural activity consolidated in the Central Valley, where it remains that region's primary economic driver. At the state government level in Sacramento, this has resulted in an ongoing tension between the more ephemeral coastal elite attitudes and the no-nonsense pragmatism of the Central Valley. This tension is set only to be exacerbated by the influx of coastal Californians east to the interior.

Yet this doesn't have to be the state's destiny. Oddly, despite the dramatic shift in California's economy at the turn of the 21st Century, much of the state's built environment remains stuck in the mid-20th Century post-WWII paradigm of single-family suburban development. There is a perfect reason for this: most Californians still live in those environments, and the houses themselves are protected assets that have appreciated significantly over time.

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The imbalance between high-wage growth in the knowledge-work sectors and the lack of new housing to accommodate new workers has led to some bad outcomes. By far the most significant being notoriously unaffordable housing and rising inequality across the entire state (for a more in-depth analysis of this specific issue, I recommend reading Conor Dougherty's 2020 book "Golden Gates: Fighting for Housing in America").

California state representatives in Sacramento have taken notice of this alarming trend and are busy proposing legislative solutions. In 2019 the state Assembly passed Assembly Bill 68 (AB-68), which Governor Newsom signed into law. AB-68 legalized accessory dwelling units (ADUs) on single-family zoned lots across the state. Also known as "granny flats," "backyard cottages," or "in-law units," ADUs have turned out to be an excellent solution to increasing housing supply without drastically altering single-family neighborhood character (which is what AB-68 opponents feared would happen).

“Yes in my Backyard” - Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) have turned out to be very popular with California homeowners, spurring an entire new industry devoted to ADU project delivery (Design by Author)

Building on the success of AB-68, two controversial bills currently on the table in the California Senate, Senate Bill 9 (SB-9) and Senate Bill 10 (SB-10), aim at further reforming residential zoning across the state.

SB-9 relaxes restrictions on single-family zoning by allowing property owners to split their lots, effectively legalizing four homes (fourplex) on a single-family zoned site. SB-10 gives local municipalities the power to re-zone areas for housing developments of up to 10 homes on transit-rich, urban infill sites.

As you can imagine, these two bills face an uphill battle in the state legislature due to vocal resistance from cities and neighborhood groups across the state.

However, underlying the debate over SB-9 and SB-10 is a more considerable discussion over the future of housing in California. Municipalities and counties across the state are now in the process of updating the Housing Element portions of their General Plans for the 2023 – 2031 cycle as required by the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD).

Earlier this year, regional planning bodies such as the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) and Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) finalized the "Regional Housing Needs Allocation" (RHNA) process. This process determined the number of new homes each local jurisdiction needs to accommodate for the next decade's cycle.

Some California cities are not happy. Palo Alto, for instance, is appealing their allocation because they believe they are being penalized by ABAG for its recent efforts to curb job growth. Other Bay Area cities like Dublin are challenging their RHNA allocation because they exceeded their allocation in the previous cycle, which they feel is not considered with the new allocation.

To opponents of state housing legislation and regional housing goals like RHNA, the debate is less about housing per se and more about state vs. "local control."

For most of California's history, zoning has been mainly under the purview of local city and county jurisdictions. Municipal and county governments deciding what happens locally makes sense from a governance point-of-view and a constitutional perspective.

Yet, it would be inaccurate to characterize California state legislators as conspiring to remove "local control" in a bad faith effort to assert dominance over the state's local governments (even if that is what it may look like to some).

First of all, most of California's state legislators come from local government, having served as city councilmembers or county supervisors, and maintain strong ties to their communities. Secondly, bills like SB-9 and SB-10 are intended as tools for local governments to leverage when crafting their Housing Elements (they are not "mandates").

Even if a bill like SB-9 passed the state legislature, it is not as if suddenly every single-family residential neighborhood across California will be sprouting up fourplexes.

Aside from local zoning regulations, many other variables influence development (building & safety codes, financing, construction material prices, labor, etc.). Could there be unintended negative consequences? Certainly possible, but again, the state is looking for solutions to the housing crisis - not to create more problems.

The best way for local governments to avoid perceived state government overreach would be to propose their own solutions.

These solutions need not be aesthetically overbearing or neighborhood character altering. For instance, simply splitting an existing two-story house into two units via an interior remodel plus adding an ADU could transform a single-family home into a triplex without changing anything fundamental about how it presents on the public right-of-way. But this type of conversion would not be allowed under most current local zoning codes.

It also isn't the type of project that institutional real estate developers would take on due to the inability to achieve economies of scale and high returns. More likely, a homeowner looking to leverage their property to generate additional income would take on a project such as this. We can already see this is the case with the popularity of accessory dwelling units in single-family lot backyards across the state.

Before WWII, there was a much higher percentage of "mom & pop" property owners. Thanks to zoning that allowed small multi-family buildings alongside single-family homes, a family could develop a multi-unit property and rent out the other units to help pay off the mortgage (or have a place for grandma to live). These buildings are in today's parlance, often referred to as "Missing Middle Housing," and can mostly be found in California cities and towns that developed before WWII.

This triplex in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles features a 1920’s Spanish bungalow style duplex building in the front with a renovated 1890’s farmhouse in the back. Pre-WWII neighborhoods are full of attractive examples of “Missing Middle” housing. California cities wondering how they are going to meet their RHNA allocation numbers should look back to the first half of the 20th Century for inspiration.

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To assuage the frequent misunderstandings about zoning reforms that would allow Missing Middle Housing (and hyperbolic rhetoric about "density"), I've recently been exploring how single-family lots can accommodate this type of housing in an aesthetically pleasing manner.

So instead of framing the Great California Housing Debate purely in terms of "number of units," we should instead consider how to build not only functional but also beautiful housing.

As California counties and municipalities go through the Housing Element update process, I would encourage them to think beyond the numbers and consider architecture, design, and aesthetics. How can small multi-family residential buildings enhance neighborhood character? What are the opportunities in post-WWII neighborhoods to learn from the patterns of the early 20th Century?

For inspiration, I am sharing a project I designed recently. The project was part of the City of Los Angeles-sponsored "Low-Rise LA Design Challenge" earlier this year and imagines a fourplex on a typical 7,500 square-foot single-family lot in L.A.

Los Angeles Courtyard Fourplex

Design by Adam Mayer, Architect

Given the current housing crisis across the state, local governments in California are beginning to examine how they can reform zoning laws to accommodate a wider variety of housing options. One way cities can accomplish this is by rezoning single-family residential lots to allow “Missing Middle” style housing. The design is a conceptual proposal for the City of Los Angeles that explores ways in which a typical 50’ x 150’ single-family residential zoned lot can be repurposed with a 4-unit building (fourplex).

The Courtyard Fourplex consists of two buildings, united by a central courtyard that provides ample access to light and air. The street-facing building consists of two 2 bed / 2 bath units, stacked upon one another, while the rear building consists of a 3 bed / 2 bath unit stacked on top of a 1 bed / 1 bath ‘granny’ unit as well as a carport with parking spaces for 3 vehicles (plus 2 additional vehicles if parked in tandem).

The courtyard, which opens toward the south to take advantage of the Southern California sun, is the project’s main social gathering space. With a shared outdoor electric grill, it is imagined that this space also functions as an outdoor dining room for family members or other residents to share a meal.

The more “public” functions of each unit (living/kitchen/dining) face inward toward the courtyard while the more “private” bedrooms face outward. Aside from the bottom unit in the street-facing building, which is entered from the street side, the other three units are accessed from the courtyard, further activating the space.

The architecture is inspired by the spirit of several of the great Southern California architects. The communal living arrangements of Rudolph Schindler, the clean lines and health considerations of Richard Neutra and the hints of Spanish Colonial architecture with the modern sensibilities of Irving Gill all influence the design.

Building upon this Southern California vernacular are the latest in sustainable and energy efficiency strategies including all-electric appliances, EV charging stations at the carport, bicycle storage, permeable pavers in the driveway, continuous insulation in all exterior walls and roofs, smart metering, a drinking water bottle fill station in the courtyard, rooftop solar panels and a ‘solar garden’ green roof on top of the rear building.

A version of this piece originally appeared on the website NewGeography on October 1, 2020

California State Senate Bill 1120 (SB 1120), a bill that would’ve permitted duplexes on land zoned for single-family residences across the state, died abruptly at the 11th hour back in August of last year when assembly members in Sacramento failed to pass a vote before the official end of the 2020 legislative session. While the failure was a blow to housing advocacy and YIMBY groups, it was a win for neighborhood and homeowner associations across the state who viewed the legislation as too radical and heavy-handed.

SB 1120 isn’t the first, and it won’t be the last, battle over housing in California. While the state’s growing severity over housing affordability, homelessness, and economic inequality is something most people are concerned about, the debate over how to address these issues is increasingly embattled.

On the one hand are a growing chorus of younger voices and urbanists advocating for more housing density while older, mostly suburban, homeowners prefer to keep their single-family home neighborhoods the way they were when they bought into them.

Beyond California, the housing debate became a national issue in the 2020 Presidential election. On the campaign trail, former President Trump stoked suburban fears about public housing and rising crime by implying a Biden administration would do away with local zoning control. The Democrats, on the other hand, failed to reassure suburban voters by lacking the conviction to denounce the rioting and looting taking place across the country last summer.

With the dialogue over housing more polarized than it has been in recent memory, it is perhaps now more important than ever that some sort of compromise over a way forward enter the conversation. Luckily, we have the new book by Daniel Parolek, “Missing Middle Housing: Thinking Big and Building Small to Respond to Today’s Housing Crisis” to help guide us.

Parolek, an architect and founding principal of Opticos Design in Berkeley, California, has spent more than two decades focused on the question of “Missing Middle” Housing, which he defines as: “a range of multi-unit or clustered housing types, compatible in scale with single-family homes, that help meet the growing demand for walkable urban living, respond to shifting household demographics, and meet the need for different price points.”

Helpful diagrams and case studies throughout the book assist in explaining the different types of Missing Middle Housing, which range from duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes to courtyard apartments, bungalow courts, and townhouses.

What is noteworthy about Missing Middle Housing is that none of the types analyzed by Parolek are new- examples of all these types can be found in cities and inner-ring suburbs throughout the United States. In many cases, these types are beloved architectural relics that are part of our collective cultural memory- think of the brownstone townhouses of Park Slope, Brooklyn, or the Spanish bungalow courts of Hollywood in Los Angeles.

What unites these types despite their stylistic variety is that most of them were built before World War II. The rise of local zoning regulations and demand for single-family housing after WWII accelerated the trend away from Missing Middle Housing.

Parolek goes onto explain that in the 1970s cities attempted to address the resulting lack of housing variety and availability of options for low-income households by abruptly changing zoning in single-family zoned areas adjacent to downtown to allow higher densities. What resulted was often poorly designed and produced an enormous backlash from impacted communities. He argues that we have still not recovered from this era in urban planning and why the aversion to the term “density” remains high today.

The answer to the imbalance between single-family zoning and high-density multi-unit buildings is revisiting the concept of Missing Middle Housing. Parolek makes the point that “Missing Middle Housing is about house-scale buildings that happen to have more than one unit within them”.

This contrasts with much of the discourse about housing supply today which is focused on adding density and the maximum number of housing units. Unlike the imposing, boxy condo buildings that have sprouted up across urban areas over the past decade, Missing Middle Housing aims to deliberately blend in with single-family neighborhoods as to not offend aesthetic sensibilities or overwhelm them in scale.

After making the case for Missing Middle Housing (including a discussion about how it can be an affordable solution for middle-income households who are priced out of the single-family market) Parolek spends the middle portion of the book breaking down each housing type into ideal form characteristics based on the constraints of a typical suburban single-family lot.

Rather than density, floor-to-area ratio, lot coverage and other zoning formulas, Parolek’s analysis focuses on design characteristics such as height, shape (form), unit layout, and ideal building dimensions.

For instance, as Parolek describes an ideal fourplex: “it often has a depth similar to that of a house, which allows for long, but shallow units with natural light exposure on the long sides of the unit. There is often one shared entry door that leads to a shared foyer or recessed porch with four doors. The two doors facing the street each go up a flight of stairs to the upper units. To the left and right are the doors that enter the ground floor units.”

To an architect like myself, the deep dive into the different Missing Middle Housing descriptions is fascinating and inspiring given the potential creativity involved in re-imagining modern-day versions of these classic types. To planners and bureaucrats who deal with data and formulas, the focus on form-based design might come off as off-putting or even confusing.

Parolek is aware of this disconnect and provides a list of bullet points on how to regulate each Missing Middle Housing type (for instance, Parolek recommends municipalities start by permitting fourplexes on corner lots in single-family neighborhoods instead of throughout entire neighborhoods).

If there is one criticism I have, it is that the book may be overly technical to the casual reader more interested in the history of land-use or the social/political implications of zoning reform. Beyond the introduction, the book is more of a “how-to” guide in designing and implementing Missing Middle Housing.

With regard to Missing Middle Housing implementation, Parolek does give some tips that may be helpful to planners and developers in getting this type of project across the finish line in resistant communities. He suggests framing the housing conversation away from terms like “density, multifamily and upzoning” and instead re-focusing on form and scale.

Of course, even with “house-scale” developments, residents in single-family neighborhoods might still have hang-ups about allowing them nearby. Toward the end of the book, Parolek gives some suggestions on where to apply Missing Middle Housing. He suggests starting with individual, small lot infill in pre-WWII neighborhoods that already have a mix of Missing Middle types and then moving onto secondary corridors that are historically zoned for commercial uses but could support Missing Middle developments. This seems to be a reasonable approach. Less clear is how Missing Middle Housing might exist in car-oriented suburban developments built in the past 20-30 years.

Overall, the book is an excellent launching pad to start re-thinking and talking about Missing Middle Housing again. In an era of deep political polarization that has spilled over into the land-use debate, finding a respectful balance between large-scale urban condo developments and single-family homes might be the best approach in addressing our ongoing housing crisis.

This piece was co-authored with myself, Fay Darmawi, Founder & Executive Producer of the SF Urban Film Fest, and Omeed Manocheri, SF Urban Film Fest Program Producer

Proposition 15 was a California ballot measure in the November 2020 election that aimed to amend the state’s Constitution to adjust the limitations on property taxes introduced by the 1978 California Proposition 13. Colloquially referred to as ‘split roll,’ Proposition 15 would have increased taxes on large commercial properties by assessing them at market value. Analysts projected that this would have raised 11.5 billion dollars for California’s public schools, community colleges, and other government services.

For this SF Urban Film Fest program, panelists Ynze Bijl, a producer and director for campaign ads, and Tenoch Flores, a political campaign communications consultant, analyzed 3 ‘Yes’ and 3 ‘No’ commercials that ran during the Prop 15 campaign.

Even though both panelists have expertise in the field of political campaigns, neither worked directly on either side of the Prop 15 campaign, allowing them to share their unbiased takes on the ads.

Starting with the Yes on Prop 15 side, the first commercial featured stock footage portraying ‘corporate CEO fat cats’ in suits, while voice-over narration explained how they are not ‘paying their fair share’ and taking advantage of tax handouts. Flores explained in his analysis how the use of a ‘villain’ (in this case, the generic corporate CEO) is a common tactic in political ads like this.

The ad then quickly cut to more stock footage of people representing homeowners, renters, and small-business owners, implying that Prop 15 would help these groups lessen their tax burden. Bijl criticized the lack of tone change and aggressive music as the short video transitioned to show the group of people that Prop 15 would benefit.

The following two Yes on Prop 15 commercials also used a similar ‘corporations need to pay their fair share’ framing to try and persuade voters. The second ad attempted to appeal to homeowners by stating that taxpayers would save $121 per year for the average home. Both Flores and Bijl agreed that using an exact (and relatively low) figure like this isn’t very persuasive; it could have the opposite effect.

Next up were the three No on Prop 15 ads. Right away, the first ad featured a scene with a small business owner closing down his restaurant while a narrator spoke about the dangers of Prop 15 over dramatic piano music. It was designed to appeal to small business owners and homeowners. Flores commented how the ad leveraged the times we are in as the COVID-19 lockdowns have already negatively impacted many small businesses.

The subsequent No on Prop 15 ad, in Spanish, used the same dramatic piano music. Instead of a small business owner, it featured a dejected-looking family putting their belongings into a moving van, presumably losing their home due to unaffordable property taxes. Bijl commented that even though the acting was overdramatic here, the message was clear to voters — California is expensive and unaffordable, and Prop 15 will make it even more so.

The final No on Prop 15 ad also featured a small business closing down, this time featuring a barbershop. Like the previous No on Prop 15 ads, the narrator says flat out that ‘homeowners are next’ — implying that homeowners will be subject to higher taxes in the future, even though Proposition 15 would not have raised taxes on residential properties.

Overall, the panelists agreed that generally, the No on Prop 15 ads were more persuasive. The ‘No’ ads were more effective at utilizing storytelling to convince voters that Prop 15 would hurt everyday Californians.

Although the vote was close in the end (it passed in California’s most populous county of Los Angeles), Flores concludes that ultimately the Yes on Prop 15 campaign had to compete with too many other progressive causes at the ballot box (including voting Donald Trump out of office and flipping U.S. Senate seats) that it may not have received the attention that it needed to pass.

Watch the program:

This event took place on February 17, 2021 and was curated by the SF Urban Film Fest Program Producer Omeed Manocheri. For more information about the SF Urban Film Fest, visit our website.

The 2021 SF Urban Film Fest brought audiences several new program types. Virtual formats that have been in development for some time became a necessity in response to social distancing and shelter-in-place guidelines due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Among the new formats, which provided a broader audience with new engagement opportunities, was the interactive watch party.

In this session, “The City” — a short film from 1939 and based on urban historian Lewis Mumford’s ideas — was simultaneously broadcast with live commentary from two remote panelists. The session also featured live comments and questions submitted by the audience for both panelists and other audience members to meditate upon and answer.

The development of cities parallel tracked the rise of motion pictures: rural to urban, silent to sound — serving as witnesses to our changing lifestyles, experiences, and attitudes about an increasingly urban world.

This central thesis led the discussion between David Vega-Barachowitz, Director of Urban Design at WXY Architecture + Urban Design and adjunct professor of planning and urban design at Syracuse University, and John Moody, a creative director, filmmaker, and urban designer.

Throughout the discussion, Vega-Barachowitz and Moody reflected on the use of film throughout the history of urban planning. This included examining how the medium has been used, which planning interventions succeeded and failed, and what has changed in the many decades since the medium was adapted for imagining and building the future city.

“The City” was a groundbreaking look into American urban planning’s future coming out of the Great Depression. The American Institute of Planners produced the film for the 1939 New York World’s Fair. It promoted the ideas of ‘regionalism,’ which sought to distribute wealth to rural areas of the country from the more productive but crowded urban areas.

The film’s beginning shows an idyllic agrarian existence in a rural town where residents mill corn and basketweave by hand with minimal assistance from low-technology tools. Vega-Barachowitz points out how this scene paints a nostalgia for a not-to-distant early industrialization past in which urban life was presumably more in balance with the natural world.

The scene then cuts to footage of a bleak and smog-covered Pittsburgh. Tense music with a frenetic narration shifts the tone and depicts a city that has fallen to heavy industry.

“We mine the coal, load the furnace, load the steel, drive the rivets… we’re lucky if we have the chance to keep the job from day to day, month to month,” speaks the narrator. Poor, working-class residents (including children) are seen walking around dilapidated shacks while smoke plumes from steel mills billow over the city.

Vega-Barachowitz explained that this scene is what planners at the time officially referred to as ‘blight.’ He further noted that Pittsburgh passed landmark legislation to limit the amount of smoke emitted in the City two years after this scene was filmed.

The film cuts again to another scene — this time a new city of skyscrapers towering over bustling, noisy streets full of people and cars.

Here too, the setting is bleak as cars compete with crowds of pedestrians for street space. This scene sets up for the final act in which we return to an ideal city — one which is similar to the town in the first scene, yet more modern.

The towns featured in the final scenes are the ‘New Towns’ of Radburn, New Jersey, and Greenbelt, Maryland. These two towns represent what was considered by planners to be an ideal harmonization between man, machine, and nature. Here, the living and recreation areas are separated from the dirty factories, and the factories that are closer to town are more modern, clean, and efficient.

Unlike contemporary ‘suburbs,’ the housing in these New Towns is mostly multi-family townhome developments instead of detached single-family homes. Children playing in newly built public parks further solidifies the image of an idealized modern city. In describing the New Towns, the narrator gleefully repeats ‘never letting cities grow too large to manage.’

Panelist Moody comments how “The City” is an example of filmmakers being influenced by 1920’s Soviet propaganda films. Fast cut editing and a frenetic score and narration add to the feeling of tension and unease throughout before arriving at the New Town scenes.

Perhaps it is no surprise then that there are parallels between the Communist program of the Soviets and President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal of the 1930’s — both were giant centralized government undertakings. Moody also pointed out that similar to Soviet propaganda films, “The City” featured real people in real life rather than actors (although the real people featured may have been directed in their scenes).

While “The City” represents a time in American history when the Federal Government was invested in large-scale urban planning initiatives, it was an era that did not last long. Several of the people involved in the making of the film were blacklisted during the McCarthy Era.

It’s challenging to imagine what a contemporary version of “The City’’ would look like. When asked if there is a role for films like it in modern society, the panelists confessed that this was something that they had “been chewing on for the last five or six years.”

Moody explained that there are fewer examples of large-scale productions that try to convince people of a utopian vision. Instead, corporations use the utopian vision as a mechanism to sell their products.

He points out that such a film would require a massive capital investment, which in the case of “The City’’ came from the Carnegie Foundation, and that financiers are less willing to tie films to direct action. “Foundations certainly have a role in lots of promotional and propaganda films today, but they’re often dealing with abstract social issues and almost never dealing with trying to re-design something spatially or effect the physical world”.

Futurama was an exhibit and ride at the 1939 New York World’s Fair designed by Norman Bel Geddes, which presented a possible model of the world 20 years into the future (1959–1960). The installation was sponsored by the General Motors Corporation and was characterized by automated highways and vast suburbs.

It’s here that Vega-Barachowitz interjects that understanding the context in which the film was presented is vital, an era with no smartphones where “people had to go to the fair of the future and were ready to digest and understand what that future might look like…there was energy and enthusiasm around large-scale housing efforts that ended up coming to fruition in the late 1940’s”.

Moody piggybacks and expands, “is the 30-minute or the hour or feature-length film really the best medium for trying to get people on board with an idea like this?” He states that we also have to consider the efficacy, that the film was very effective in convincing audiences of the ideas presented but history “took a different course and we didn’t end up with many of these kinds of communities. We ended up with mass suburbanization and creating wealth for white middle-class Americans through single-family homeownership.”

Finally, Vega-Barachowitz and Moody discuss how there is an opportunity to create smaller incremental campaigns that fit today’s media environment and redress some of the heavily spatial solutions enacted in the 1950’s and 60’s.

These sorts of campaigns can have a vital role in reaching people and encouraging them to vote, with Vega-Barachowitz pointing to single-family zoning housing bills in both Minneapolis and California as examples.

He closes by asserting, “what was largely missing in [“The City”] is the culture of the street, the idea of neighborhoods, the importance of relationships. The way in which this film and the images of blight ended up being turned on their heads…”

Watch the program:

This event took place on February 15, 2021 and was curated by the SF Urban Film Fest Program Producer Omeed Manocheri. For more information about the SF Urban Film Fest, visit our website.

This is a reproduction of a letter I sent to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors on March 23, 2021. The purpose of this letter is to raise awareness about the growing sentiment in San Francisco regarding rising violent crime and the implications for the future of the City as it emerges from the pandemic.

Dear San Francisco Board of Supervisors,

I'm writing today as a newly former resident of San Francisco who called the city home for over a decade. You may wonder why someone who is not your current constituent is spending their time reaching out to you.  For starters, I still reside in the Bay Area and care very much about what happens in the City, given that it is the cultural heartbeat of the region. The decisions you make not only impact your constituents but have ripple effects far beyond the City's borders.

More importantly, though, I am writing because I am deeply concerned about the City's current state concerning out-of-control crime and how it negatively impacts S.F. residents and businesses (many who are my close friends).

During my time in San Francisco, I served as a Board Member of my local neighborhood organizations on Polk Street, working to improve the area to make it a safer, cleaner and more welcoming place.

You can imagine my horror then in learning about two recent incidents that took place along Polk Street: the brutal robbery of a 33-year-old Asian woman named Clarisse on Bush Street near Polk and the racially-motivated assault on an Asian man named Simon Lau at Clay and Polk. Not to mention the countless other senseless attacks on the San Francisco Asian community, which I am sure you are all aware of (and are probably losing sleep over), so I don't need to remind you again here.

Before you start defending yourself with the same excuses for the sorry state of the City (the pandemic, the lockdowns, the economic frustration, the same rising crime trends occurring across the country, etc.) I want to acknowledge that it has been a tough year, and I am sure none of you expected to lead San Francisco during a once-in-a-century pandemic.

The City did an excellent job at minimizing the lives lost to COVID-19, and the vaccine distribution effort so far has been impressive. You all and the Mayor's office and Department of Public Health deserve credit and applause for this.

But now, with the pandemic subsiding and things starting to open back up, you will not be able to hide behind the excuse of 'the pandemic' for failings in other areas. Let's start with the rampant hardcore drug use and accompanying homelessness crisis that has been raging on in the Tenderloin and SoMa long before the pandemic. This year already looks to be the worst year ever for drug overdose deaths – 135 already in 2021.

I've raised this question to you all in the past (to crickets) so I'll raise it again: why does San Francisco tolerate having a reputation as somewhere with such an apathetic attitude toward open hard drug use and drug dealing (which brings with it other dangers such as gang violence)?

I know many of your friends in the non-profit world would argue it is because the City should strive to be 'compassionate' and 'tolerant' of all lifestyles. In principle, I do not disagree with the aims of compassion and tolerance. Still, perhaps the reality is that being too tolerant is doing a disservice to San Francisco's long-standing reputation by enabling so many untimely and avoidable deaths.

There is nothing at all compassionate about the current state of the Tenderloin and other downtown areas.

'But drug addiction is a public health issue, not a criminal one' – I don't disagree with this either. Do I think someone who is addicted to drugs should be thrown in jail? No, but I think they should be compelled into treatment to get clean and get on with their lives.

I also believe that the City should stop tolerating open drug dealing (which is so blatant I'm surprised you aren't more embarrassed and ashamed about it).

While drug use in and of itself should not be treated as a criminal issue, the environments created by open drug use and dealing lead to circumstances that are more welcoming to all sorts of crime ranging from smash & grab burglaries to armed robbery and even homicide.

The City is sending a message to would-be criminals: 'hey, we don't care about the well-being of our neighborhoods so why should you?'

Now, do I really think you guys don't care about your neighborhoods? No, I think you do- I know, having interacted with Supervisor Peskin and Supervisor Stefani over the years that they genuinely care deeply about the neighborhoods they represent. And I know Supervisor Haney, who represents the most challenged neighborhoods in the entire City, goes out of his way to engage with the community and does his best to go to bat for his constituents.

But good intentions, and even supposedly good policy, can only get you so far (they may even backfire).

One only needs to look at the current District Attorney who, while he has a compelling narrative about his personal life story, uses San Francisco as a laboratory for unproven experiments in criminal justice reform. Using his high-profile position to elevate his voice into the national conversation about 'mass incarceration,' the City suffers as he refuses to prosecute repeat felons who end up inflicting harm and even death upon innocent San Franciscans.

This is not hyperbole or partisan political rhetoric – it is a fact. To try and argue otherwise is to gaslight the citizens of San Francisco into believing that they should have to tolerate an increasingly dangerous and violent city while the person elected to protect them is publicly working through his childhood trauma.

The reality is, there is no 'mass incarceration' problem in San Francisco. The DA often goes out of his way to tout how he reduced the jail numbers to historic lows so clearly the national trends do not apply here. While there are plenty of valid criticisms to make about the country's often inhumane carceral system, it is something that cannot be solved by San Francisco alone.

In fact, by not having a viable alternative to jail time for criminals who commit multiple violent felonies in the City, the DA and his supporters run the risk of turning off folks who would otherwise be open to thoughtful, rather than reckless, reforms.

Unfortunately, I sense that most San Franciscans are already at a breaking point concerning rampant crime. I decided to write this letter because I know there are many folks who are too afraid to speak out in fear of being 'canceled' or being perceived as uncompassionate.

San Francisco is a small city, and some people, especially those driven by naïve idealism, can be vicious and destructive in support of their pet causes.

Just look at the ongoing scandal with the San Francisco Board of Education where the Vice President of the Board, drunk on her power, repeatedly wrote hateful and racist comments about students and parents, all in the name of supposed social justice. She still refuses to step down and acknowledge the harm she has caused to the Asian community.

This letter is for victims of crimes in San Francisco and for everyone who wants to live in a safe and prosperous City.

It is for the small business owners who have had to put up with a year of lockdowns, many who had to shut their doors permanently and many others who have had their businesses smashed and burglarized.

It is for the Asian elders who are now too afraid to walk to the corner market just to get groceries after seeing their peers attacked and murdered over and over again.

It is for the hardworking men and women of the San Francisco Police Department who have been undermined and unappreciated not only by the District Attorney but even by some of you on the Board of Supervisors (which is extraordinarily shameful).

As an architect and urban planner by training, I've spent many years studying the rise and fall of cities- what makes great cities prosper and what makes cities fall.

When it comes to cities failing, a lack of safety and public trust is at the very top of the list. If you can't ensure a fundamental level of security for your citizens, nothing else really matters; you might as well call it quits.

I'm not saying this because I hope you fail – I don't, I want you all to succeed. But right now, I am afraid you are very close to failing unless something changes very quickly. My advice would be to put partisan politics aside, cut it out with the lofty feel-good rhetoric and start taking real bold action to turn the tide. Which of you is going to step up and act like the adult in the room?

Do you want to be remembered as the Board who presided over the demise of a once-great City? Or do you want to be recognized as the group that pulled the City out of the pandemic, making it even more prosperous than ever before? The choice is up to you.

Best,
Adam Mayer

If you are a resident or business owner in San Francisco and are concerned and frustrated about the rising violent crime in your neighborhood, I encourage you to please reach out to your local elected officials and make your voice heard:

• District 1 Supervisor - Connie Chan connie.chan@sfgov.org

• District 2 Supervisor - Catherine Stefani catherine.stefani@sfgov.org

• District 3 Supervisor - Aaron Peskin aaron.peskin@sfgov.org

• District 4 Supervisor - Gordon Mar gordon.mar@sfgov.org

• District 5 Supervisor - Dean Preston dean.preston@sfgov.org

• District 6 Supervisor - Matt Haney matt.haney@sfgov.org

• District 7 Supervisor - Myrna Melgar myrna.melgar@sfgov.org

• District 8 Supervisor - Rafael Mandelman rafael.mandelman@sfgov.org

• District 9 Supervisor - Hillary Ronen hillary.ronen@sfgov.org

• District 10 Supervisor - Shamann Walton shamann.walton@sfgov.org

• District 11 Supervisor - Ahsha Safaí ahsha.safai@sfgov.org

• San Francisco Mayor - London Breed mayorlondonbreed@sfgov.org

• San Francisco City Attorney - Dennis Herrera cityattorney@sfcityatty.org

• CA District 11 State Senator - Scott Wiener scott.wiener@sen.ca.gov

• CA 17th District State Assemblymember - David Chiu assemblymember.chiu@assembly.ca.gov

• CA 19th District State Assemblymember - Phil Ting assemblymember.ting@assembly.ca.gov