San Francisco was the place to go to be groovy and get some free love. In fact, the city was such a fantastic place with so much innovation it’s growth alarmed the locals. Today, far from being the place where you’d go for a love in and end up living, it’s one of the highest priced cities in the nation. The city has a housing deficit of 100,000 units and a housing subsidy deficit (if all households who needed help with housing got it) of $4,000,000,000. That’s billion. It’s now conventional wisdom that San Francisco turned from the city of love by the Bay, to the home of thousand dollar studios because of overregulation and suppressed housing supply.

Has Seattle learned anything from the San Francisco Death Spiral, the tragic spin caused when the response by public officials to higher rents is inflationary fees and rules? Evidently not. In today’s Planning Land Use and Sustainability (PLUS) Committee Councilmember Mike O’Brien will try to cram through his proposal for a tax on all new development.

This isn’t the answer. What is? Loosening the constraints on all housing supply, both for profit and non-profit subsidized housing. In an article about the San Francisco mess and how to fix it, Edward Glaeser points out some good ideas to get the supply chain moving again, including this idea:

Another change is even more drastic. For decades, Massachusetts has allowed the builders of affordable housing to do an end run around local zoning rules if the locality doesn’t have enough such units. A similar policy in California would prod expensive localities to loosen their rules and impose state-mandated deregulation if they don’t comply.

If San Franciscans are serious about wanting to reduce housing costs, they need to support measures that make a difference, not engage in meaningless protests.

The “meaningless protests” to which Glaeser refers is the blocking of Google buses which has happened in Seattle to Microsoft shuttles. Rather than do this kind of thing, Glaeser suggests, we should be pushing for more housing which means less regulation and costs. The real progressive and groovy thing to do would be to lie down in front of O’Brien’s new tax, blocking it rather than Microsoft shuttles.

Even if Councilmember O’Brien turns his new tax into his Sawant moment, building even subsidized housing is becoming more difficult because of bad zoning decisions, outlawing innovative choices,  and increased costs of operations. A look at San Francisco can be a look ahead at our future or a disaster we were able to avoid. The choice is up to us. We can either be an open loving city, full of gentle people welcoming growth, or we can slam the door in peoples faces with high prices and few housing choices.