Mattson goes to trial; SF transfer tax cut on hold

Ken Mattson, the Sonoma developer and investor charged with running a years-long Ponzi scheme that defrauded investors out of $100 million, has changed his mind again.

After federal agents arrested him in May 2025, Mattson initially pleaded not guilty to the nine-count felony charge, which included money laundering, obstruction of justice and wire fraud. Then, last month, after prosecutors presented Mattson with the evidence they’d gathered, Mattson agreed to plead guilty to at least one count of wire fraud, which carried a 12-year prison sentence.

Mattson was set to formally enter that plea before a federal judge in Oakland on Monday, June 15. Then, on Thursday night, he changed course again, according to a letter submitted to the court by U.S. Attorney Craig Missakian. Mattson has decided to maintain his innocence and take his chances with a jury trial.

Each of the nine counts carries a maximum 20-year prison sentence. The initial trial was set to begin in 2027. It’s unclear how this back-and-forth will impact that schedule. Neither Pollack nor the U.S. District Court did not return The Real Deal’s request for comment.

Pushback and retractions

The two candidates who survived the primary race to succeed Rep. Nancy Pelosi in Congress couldn’t be more opposed when it comes to housing policy.

State Sen. Scott Wiener, a forebear of the pro-growth YIMBY movement, believes the housing affordability crisis is really a housing shortage, and thus all new housing supply is good housing supply. His opponent, San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan, is a vocal supply skeptic, who sees government subsidy and preservation as the keys to making housing accessible to working families.

Yet, those tasked with actually building subsidized affordable housing in San Francisco are aligning themselves with Wiener.

“If I thought we could build enough affordable housing as a first order of business, I’d be all for it,” said Matthew Franklin, president and CEO of MidPen Housing, one of the Bay Area’s most productive nonprofit affordable housing developers. “But we need an all-of-the-above strategy. If you believe in the laws of supply and demand, then you have to build more housing.”

This is especially true, he said, as the region adds more jobs amid the ongoing artificial intelligence boom. Franklin applauded many of Wiener’s policies over the last decade, particularly SB 35 and SB 423, which essentially stripped local government’s power to reject a fully affordable housing project that complies with zoning and design standards.

Chan has argued that deregulation won’t build the housing San Francisco needs. Statewide, nearly 40,000 shovel-ready affordable units have been held up by a lack of funding, according to an Enterprise Community Partners report from earlier this year.

Yet, affordable projects require $300,000 to $500,000 of subsidy per unit. As one affordable housing developer told TRD this week, those kinds of resources aren’t available at scale, and neither the city nor the state can afford to wait for those subsidies in order to start adding housing supply.

Locally, the city of San Francisco has floated a few ways to kickstart construction, including a recent proposal from Mayor Daniel Lurie and Supervisor Bilal Mahmood to halve the city’s real estate transfer tax.

However, budget woes have now put that idea on hold. The current transfer tax imposes 5.75 and 6 percent levies on properties that sell for more than $10 million and $25 million, respectively. The existing tax is expected to bring in $400 million over the next couple years. With the city now facing a budget deficit of $607 million, cutting that transfer tax cash flow in half no longer sounds so good.

“Until that is resolved, we are not proceeding,” with the transfer tax cut, Mahmood told the local news website, Mission Local.