A go-to criticism against District 5 Supervisor Dean Preston from his opponents — in and out of politics — is that he blocks housing.
Candidates hoping to unseat him in next week’s election point to sites like 400 Divisadero St., the location of the long-shuttered Touchless Car Wash, as a prime example.
A billboard on Divisadero, paid for by the public pressure group GrowSF, reads, “That car wash should be affordable homes: Bilal Mahmood will fix it.” Mahmood and fellow supervisor candidate Scotty Jacobs doubled down on Preston bashing with a Halloween-themed mock “funeral” this weekend at the carwash site, replete with cardboard tombstones lamenting the “death” of would-be homes at different addresses around the city.
But the truth is more complicated: A developer acquired 400 Divisadero St. in June, and it is expected to become more than 200 units of housing. So why is it still a key issue in this election cycle?
“Any notion that I blocked housing there is 100 percent made up,” Preston said. Though he mentioned disappointment at the low level of affordable units in the new project, Preston says he doesn’t oppose the most recent project proposal, which includes more than 200 market-rate units and 20 affordable ones.
While he pushed for a higher percentage of affordable units in earlier proposals before he became supervisor, Preston said the agonizing process, lasting nearly 10 years, can be blamed on developers who walked away, market conditions, and proposed deals with the mayor that fell through.
Site timeline:
- After the 2015 upzoning of the Divisadero corridor by then-Supervisor London Breed, applications started coming in to demolish the longtime gas station and carwash to build housing.
- Preston fought the change in favor of higher affordability requirements.
- A preliminary application was filed in June 2015 for 152 units, plus retail.
- Preston, then a community organizer, called for more affordable housing.
- A follow-up 2017 proposal was for 177 units, and residents again called for more affordable units on-site — but there was little opposition to the development itself.
- Supervisor Vallie Brown in 2018 amended Breed’s legislation to increase the affordability requirement on the Divisadero Corridor.
- By 2019, the city’s Planning Commission approved 186 units, 37 of which — 20 percent — were to be affordable.
Preston, who was running for supervisor in 2019, demanded 33 percent affordability, but he was unsuccessful — the approval went through. His demands, Preston said, didn’t block or delay anything.
“These folks characterize any efforts to achieve affordable housing as blocking housing, and that’s a really dishonest argument,” he said.
The deal ultimately fell through. The developer dropped out, and an update last year from the site’s owners called the project “financially impractical” because the cost of new construction in San Francisco is “the highest in the world.” Still, the owners said they would continue to seek a developer.
By then, Preston was already agitating for another development on the site.
In the 2022 budget cycle, Preston, Mayor Breed, and then-budget chair Supervisor Hillary Ronen came to an agreement to earmark some $40 million to acquire 400 Divisadero St. and other sites for 100 percent affordable housing. At the time, Breed’s office praised Ronen for negotiating the deal.
Both Ronen and Preston say the 2022 deal was reached with the intent to acquire 400 Divisadero. That didn’t happen.
Despite “a commitment from the mayor to acquire that site,” Preston said, Breed “pulled the plug” on a pending deal to build. As a result, the shuttered carwash sat unused until new plans materialized this summer.
“It’s absurd that anyone would try to say that Dean Preston did not try or did not want affordable housing at that site,” Ronen said.
She called the billboards implying Preston blocked housing at the carwash site a sort of “Trumpism.”
Now what?
The Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation nonprofit reportedly entered into a contract in 2022 with the site’s owners for affordable housing, with the understanding that city funds would be forthcoming; an email from TNDC to Preston’s office shows its leadership expected the site would be acquired. But when the money from the city didn’t come through, the contract expired.
At 400 Divisadero Street we are currently holding a funeral for the thousands of units of housing Dean Preston has blocked. All are welcome to join us in mourning. pic.twitter.com/6FHDcbjtpI
— David Broockman (@dbroockman) October 26, 2024
Neither TNDC nor the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development returned requests for comment, but the mayor’s office told the Chronicle last year that it could not show favoritism to one nonprofit or specific location.
Most recently, 4Terra Investments has moved in to build a mixed-use project on the site, with only about 10 percent affordable units.
Mahmood said that Preston’s repeated pushes for more affordability at 400 Divisadero contributed to the delays that preceded the recent proposal, though it is unclear whether that is true.
“I think the reason a lot of people are focused on it is that it … establishes the clear philosophical difference between Dean and myself, and it also speaks to a property that Dean has been involved with,” said Mahmood.
Jacobs, Preston’s other campaign rival, said Preston’s earlier advocacy for more affordability made the site too expensive to build on, but he provided no evidence of that. At a recent District 5 forum, Jacobs said, “It is critical that we have a supervisor who is not blocking high quality housing projects because of ideology, and those projects include 400 Divis.”
Jacobs declined to comment on more recent delays for which Preston blames the mayor. Meanwhile, Jacobs has opposed an affordable housing development on Parcel K in Hayes Valley, which voters approved years ago and has not materialized.
Autumn Looijen, another candidate for District 5 supervisor, also implied that Preston was at fault in a statement to Mission Local earlier this year.
“Have you walked by the abandoned carwash site at 400 Divisadero? It was approved for 182 homes five years ago … but was tied up in delays and never built,” Looijen wrote. “Dean is insisting on 100 percent affordable, and blamed the Mayor when he couldn’t get it done.”
Looijen, too, opposes development of Parcel K as affordable housing.
Preston, along with fellow supervisors, has voted against some projects, including past votes to overturn Planning Department’s approval of developments at 469 Stevenson Street (seeking an environmental impact report) and 450 O’Farrell Street (seeking larger, family-sized units). The project at 469 Stevenson was later approved for development but stalled, and new plans for 450 O’Farrell have emerged.
But when it comes to 400 Divisadero, Preston said advocates for more housing could have stepped in to pressure the mayor in 2022 to follow through on her promise to fund affordable housing on the site.
“Instead they tried to weaponize the situation there, and nonsensically blame my office for the fact that the lot is empty,” he said.
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How an old carwash became a key issue in S.F.’s District 5 race
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