I pointed out how desultory the City Council’s discussion about housing has become. Councilmembers seem to be sleepwalking through the most important discussion our city has ever had about housing. Instead of engaging with the community and each other, Councilmembers are rubber stamping legislation that will end up doing serious damage to housing affordability. However, in San Francisco, Supervisors (Supervisors are like our Councilmembers) actually have strong and divergent opinions about housing and they argue with each other in public about supply and demand and land use regulation. Supervisor Scott Wiener is a vocal and aggressive supporter of increasing housing supply. When told he was pro-development, Wiener said, “I like to refer to it as pro-housing. Housing only gets created through development.” In an article he wrote called, “Yes, Supply and Demand Apply to Housing,” Wiener took on a proposed moratorium on building in the Mission.

Yes, you heard that right: In order to combat ridiculously high housing prices and in the face of long-term population growth that shows no signs of abating, let’s put a moratorium on building new housing other than government-funded housing.

These arguments don’t hold water. Indeed, in recent history, we’ve never come close to producing enough housing to allow anyone to argue that increasing housing supply doesn’t stabilize housing prices. But, we do have evidence to the contrary. Since 2003, San Francisco has grown by nearly 100,000 people, while producing around 24,000 units of housing. During that same time period, housing prices have gone through the roof.

On the other side of the debate is Supervisor David Campos who took on Wiener’s article directly, saying, “Something unsettling has occurred – the ghost of Ronald Reagan has spoken from the grave and he’s chosen a San Francisco Supervisor as his mouthpiece.” Campos explains the reasoning behind the moratorium in the Mission.

The group has called upon the board of Supervisors and the Mayor to do three things: fast track the development of affordable housing in the Mission; pass interim controls to preserve land for affordable housing development in the neighborhood; and form a special use district, with controls similar to those in Japantown, to preserve the neighborhoods unique historic and Latino character. Ironically, the same colleague who has criticized Calle 24’s recommendations, recently introduced similar development controls on what he calls “monster houses” being built in his own neighborhood. Free marketeers often try and stop poor communities from having a voice in development, but are happy to exchange their ‘supply and demand’ hat for a nimby hat when it comes to protecting their own backyard.

Instead of leaving the substantive debate about supply and demand to the comments sections of local blogs, Supervisors are taking off the gloves to argue about what one local paper calls an “epic housing fight.” Forces are already assembling on both sides of the issue.

Pro-housing advocates have said that the lack of new market-rate housing in the Mission is what is driving gentrification there. Since 2000, about 1,500 new units of housing has been constructed, according to Planning Department data. The city still expects about 1,400 new units to be built over the next two decades, according to the neighborhood’s 2009 rezoning. Mission advocates, meanwhile, point to the fact that the Mission transformed from 50 percent Latino to 39 percent Latino between 2000 and 2010 as low-income residents headed for cheaper neighborhoods.

Imagine as Seattle where there was a City Council that wasn’t monolithic and staff driven in it’s approach to housing, engaging in real intellectual debate rather than simply choosing from column A or column B when making important policy. Perhaps the election will light a fire under the debate, or maybe the Councilmembers will just keep avoiding the real questions with a shrug.