# A dumpster fire in San Francisco

By [Brandon Donnelly](https://brandondonnelly.com) · 2020-03-08

affordable-housing, housing, housing-supply, office-development, prop-e, proposition-e, san-francisco, urbanism

---

![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/0d73943c07ae93b9884562c09e812083.jpg)

This past week, San Francisco's [Proposition E was approved by 55% of voters](https://news.ballotpedia.org/2020/03/05/san-francisco-voters-approved-proposition-e/). The measure works by limiting new office development if (or when) the city falls short of its affordable housing target for the year.

If the city only builds 25% of its housing target (currently set at 2,042 affordable units per year), then only 25% of its annual allocation of office space can be built the following year. (I just learned that large scale office development in San Francisco has been [limited to 875,000 sf per year](https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/04/san-francisco-poised-to-pass-prop-e-which-could-significantly-reduce-new-startup-office-space/) as a result of a Proposition dating back to 1986.)

San Francisco currently skews heavily in favor of jobs. The city creates [about 8.5 jobs for every unit of new housing](https://sfpublicpress.org/news/2020-02/march-2020-election-guide-prop-e). And over the last decade, SF has only averaged about [712 affordable housing units per year](https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/04/san-francisco-poised-to-pass-prop-e-which-could-significantly-reduce-new-startup-office-space/) and has never once met its target.

So at the moment, San Francisco looks destined to start building a lot less office space. And considering that new office space actually helps to fund affordable housing, I am struggling to understand why the goal seems to be to constrain job growth.

California State Senator Scott Wiener called Prop E a dumpster fire:

https://twitter.com/Scott\_Wiener/status/1235303246870261762?s=20

Call me old fashioned, but I tend to think that if the goal is to build more affordable housing, you should do things that, you know, encourage the actual construction of affordable housing.

_Photo by_ [_Eduardo Santos_](https://unsplash.com/@edusantos?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText) _on_ [_Unsplash_](https://unsplash.com/?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText)

---

*Originally published on [Brandon Donnelly](https://brandondonnelly.com/a-dumpster-fire-in-san-francisco)*