In This Issue

IT'S KIND OF eerie: While we were working on this week's cover story, Bruce B. Brugmann went back into the archives and pulled out a copy of the Bay Guardian from April 12, 1972. The big cover headline: "The Chamber's Secret Plans: Highrise Enclaves for the Rich in 10 S.F. Neighborhoods."

The nut of the story: through a committee that claimed to be working to build "middle-income" housing, the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce was pushing to build high-density housing for very wealthy people in neighborhoods all over the city. "The Chamber's plans, if successful, could make trees and backyards as obsolete in the Richmond District, the Sunset and most other S.F. neighborhoods as they are now on Russian Hill."

The story, by city editor Greggar Slettland, exposed a secretive chamber committee that was pushing to bulldoze a lot of the "older" sections of the city, starting with the Richmond and South of Market, to make way for modern, high-density, 12-story buildings. The new residences would be decidedly upscale: the target income for a one-bedroom apartment was set at (gasp) $17,300 – the equivalent of about $73,000 today.

The high-rise housing was just one part of the chamber's plan to "Manhattanize" San Francisco – to create what we, in a 1971 book, dubbed "The Ultimate Highrise": a city where big corporations called the shots, land use was directed to help developers, and working-class people were summarily forced out.

So, yeah, some things never change, or they don't change very much. As Rachel Brahinsky reports, the chamber is at it again, this time with something called "workforce housing." The claim, of course, is that the measure would encourage developers to build homes for working people – but when you look at the numbers, they don't add up. More than 60 percent of the new housing – all condos, by the way – would be sold at market rate, which means only rich people could buy them. About a quarter of the new units would allegedly be priced for the likes of teachers, nurses, and firefighters. Unfortunately, most of those folks would never be able to afford the places, particularly if they had families.

The worst part of this whole plan – and the part that's so creepily reminiscent of what the chamber was doing in 1972 – is that the neighborhoods have no say in it. Downtown still wants to call the shots.