How an old carwash became a key issue in S.F.’s District 5 race

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.