Eric Brooks on Housing Affordability and the “Housing” Debate
Across the globe, housing affordability has surfaced as a defining public policy challenge. In cities like San Francisco, the combination of skyrocketing rents and displacement pressures has ignited a fierce debate: Is the crisis a simple matter of supply, or is it a byproduct of speculative interests?
At a recent meeting of the Sierra Club Loma Prieta Chapter’s Environmental Stewardship Program (ESP), Eric Brooks, Campaign Coordinator for Our City SF, shared a perspective that challenges the mainstream "build-at-all-costs" narrative. With more than a decade of advocacy experience, Brooks argues that the housing crisis is being mischaracterized by powerful economic interests, specifically those associated with the most vocal housing groups that advocate mainly for luxury and market rate housing.
Availability vs. Affordability
A central pillar of the vocal housing movement is that a shortage of units drives price increases. Brooks disagrees, arguing that the true issue is the lack of housing that working- class families can actually afford.
“The real problem isn’t the number of housing units,” Brooks told more than 40 Sierra Club members in attendance, “but the availability of housing that ordinary working families can actually afford.”
To support this, Brooks cited census data indicating that roughly millions of housing units sit vacant. In the Bay Area, tens of thousands of units remain empty. This suggests that the crisis isn't just about a lack of roofs, but how those roofs are being used.
Housing as a Financial Asset
Brooks highlighted a shift that began in the 1990s, that housing is increasingly treated as a speculative financial asset rather than a human necessity.
Speculation: Investors often profit more from rising property values and flipping homes than from rental income.
Strategic Vacancy: Some housing analysts argue that keeping units vacant allows owners to avoid tenant protections and rent controls, making the property more attractive for future resale.
The Luxury Gap: Vocal build-at-any-cost housing advocates often target high-income earners with luxury and market rate new construction. Even units labeled "affordable" are frequently priced for households earning well above the median income, which Brooks argues fuels gentrification and displacement, often worsening overall housing affordability.
The Attack on Environmental Reviews: Weakening CEQA
While claiming to be environmentalists, in recent years the luxury and market rate housing advocates have worked to undermine environmental protections by passing state legislation to drastically weaken the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). CEQA has been an important tool used to protect people and the environment from the possible detrimental impacts of housing projects, by ensuring agency and public input on neighborhood projects. In California, preliminary review improves projects as agency and public feedback are incorporated so that only about 6% of projects undergo full CEQA reviews.
In contrast to the luxury and market rate housing advocates that are often opposed by grassroots pro-tenant and pro-affordability community housing advocates, Sierra Club California and local chapters like Loma Prieta continue to strongly support CEQA as a critical tool for environmental protection and community oversight. For advocates like Brooks, undermining environmental reviews in the name of "abundance,” strips communities and agencies of their right to provide input on the shape of their own neighborhoods and undermines public safety and health since government agencies will no longer be able to comment on these important aspects of new construction proposals.
A Path Forward
Rather than relying solely on market-driven supply, Brooks and Our City SF propose these alternative strategies to stabilize communities.
Vacancy Taxes: Penalizing owners who leave habitable units empty
Curbing Speculation: Using tax policy to discouraging "property flipping"
Alternative Ownership: Expanding community land trusts and nonprofit housing models
Public Banking: Utilizing public finance to fund low-to-middle-income developments
As policymakers weigh new legislation, the tension between unrestrained market-driven growth in luxury and market rate housing on the one hand, and community and environment-focused stability on the other, remains at the heart of the battle about who will shape our future urban/suburban housing landscape as well as who will benefit.