Three years ago Heather Knight wrote a story for the San Francisco Chronicle about a man named Jason Yu who wanted to open an ice cream shop in the city. But after spending 16 months and $150,000 jumping through red tape created by the city, Yu finally gave up.
“This became a nightmare project,” Yu told me recently, saying he might open a business elsewhere someday. “For sure I will not try to do anything in San Francisco. It just doesn’t make sense.”
Heather Knight now works for the NY Times but earlier this week she wrote a very similar story about a couple of homeowners who wanted to add an additional story to their San Francisco home to make space for their aging parents. The couple drew up plans and had them approved by the city and then things got difficult. Because in San Francisco, your neighbors can object your home improvement plans even after the city approves them.
As required by city law, Ms. Park and Mr. McDonald notified their neighbors in February 2023 and quickly learned that several of them worried that a taller building would affect their views of the city, cast shadows and allow the couple to peer into their homes.
In a city full of tech workers, the squabble led one neighbor to post signs with a QR code and the words “SAVE THE NEIGHBORHOOD” on utility poles. The QR code led to a website, whatupsf.com, which encouraged people to sign a petition opposing the renovation, to attend Tuesday’s meeting and to fight the “monster home.”
“This whole thing has become a legal and financial nightmare,” Ms. Park said in an interview, adding that she had already spent $250,000 on architecture fees, the permit application and a lawyer.
Because this is California, the neighbors raised a host of spurious environmental and historical claims about the "monster home."
But what is most stunning about all of this is that the neighbors in question have themselves expanded their homes. One of the neighbors, David Garofoli, who is now objecting to the construction doubled the size of his own house less than a decade ago. More recently, another house nearby went from under 1,000 square feet to 5,100 square feet. The current owners who paid more than $7 million for that massively upsized home are also opposing the construction project.
You know things are really bad when state senator Scott Wiener is the voice of reason.
“Good government means setting clear rules ahead of time, and if you comply with the rules, you get your permit,” Mr. Wiener said. “In San Francisco, we’ve chosen to make everything political instead of predictable. It creates a lot of bad blood.”
Unlike the story with the ice cream parlor that never opened, this one has a slightly happier ending. At a hearing before the Board of Supervisors, the complaining neighbors had their attorney make their case and the Board quickly decided the whole thing was nonsense and sided with the homeowners.
That's great but how much time and money did the homeowners waste preparing for this absurd kangaroo trial? Just because the right result prevailed doesn't mean the process itself isn't a dumpster fire.
Some good comments on this one from people who are just as exasperated by this as I am.
David Garofoli, the developer, doubles the size of a house, moves out of the state and now rents it for, no doubt, sky high prices.
He should be in Merriam-Webster's as an example of a hypocrite.
Another reader called it a real life sitcom. Honestly, if someone could make a Fawlty Towers style comedy about this that would be amazing.
This story would be funny if it wasn’t so sad. Imagine someone in an 8 million dollar home
hiring lawyers to enact red tape to force preservation of their neighbors’ home’s “working class roots.”
This sounds like a sit com and not real life. Get a grip and let your neighbors remodel their home, people!
Progressive hypocrisy abounds.
Our neighbors have a “housing is a human right” among other virtue signaling signs. So it was a tiny bit funny when they went to city council to oppose our ADU because a renter would live there. The horror.
Another example:
Something similar happened to someone we know in SF. During a house remodel, the owners wanted to enlarge a deck. Their next door neighbors who had done that themselves objected. The real reason was that having a larger deck (like the one that they themselves had built) would lessen their privacy. Self awareness and shame are not qualities that characterize those people; shamelessness and greed is what got them where they are.
Shamelessness and moral licensing is more like it. They are all good San Francisco progressives so they can be heartless jerks to their neighbors.
