Abundance

by Ezra Klein

Tahanan was built on the former site of a parking lot and temporary bail bond office. Sounds easy enough to build on. But it wasn’t zoned for affordable housing. The project could get off the ground only because of legislation passed by State Senator Scott Wiener in 2017 that fast-tracked certain kinds of affordable housing projects in California past the local approval process.3 “This project didn’t have to go before the planning department for discretionary review or the Board of Supervisors,” Rebecca Foster, the chief executive of the Housing Accelerator Fund, which led the development of Tahanan, said. “We got our entitlements in four months, which is unheard-of.” But that merely means you can begin the process of building. When you’re building affordable housing, you’re typically using public money. When you’re using public money, you have to abide by public requirements. Take the Local Business Enterprise and Non-Discrimination in Contracting Ordinance, also known as 14B.4 These requirements began in 1984 as a preference for minority- and female-owned contractors. But in 1996, California passed Proposition 209, which held that “the state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.”5 Instead of scrapping the contracting requirements, San Francisco rewrote them to favor small busi...