How SFHAC Takes Positions

SFHAC is a membership-based organization that makes most of its decisions by consensus, usually without the need to vote. Because its membership is so diverse, there are usually a variety of views on the issues that SFHAC addresses. In order to achieve consensus, all participating member's views must be heard on a topic. Though this tends to favor those organizations most active in SFHAC's business, it seems that, in its 10 years, our decisions have stayed harmoniously within the limits of our mission and goals.

We should note that, except in very rare cases, SFHAC will NOT take positions on rent control, the Ellis Act, evictions, TICs or other issues of this nature. We believe that because of how highly polarized these issues are, it's generally not possible to have any significant impact on them. In addition, the likeliest outcome would simply be to alienate groups with whom we seek common ground on housing and land use. Instead, SFHAC focuses entirely on how to build new housing and how to build it more quickly and cheaply.

On the other hand, SFHAC vigorously advocates when policies are proposed that, to our members, threaten the production of new housing in San Francisco.

Also, because of our small staff and limited resources, it is rare that SFHAC gets involved in issues outside San Francisco. We have plenty to do in our own back yard!

Finally, our policy positions are pretty restricted to issues that directly affect housing itself or those of the underlying land use that could impact housing production.