Wiener unveils $1.2T federal housing plan

The pre-eminent housing brain of the 2026 midterms published his long-anticipated housing platform earlier this week — and a price tag to execute it.

California state Sen. Scott Wiener’s campaign to replace Rep. Nancy Pelosi as San Francisco’s voice in Congress has drawn the attention of developers, policy wonks and pro-housing advocates across the country. His policies helped overhaul the state’s approach to housing production. Many have wondered if his fastball could have the same oomph in the U.S. Capitol.

On Monday, Wiener offered the first glimpse of the legislative package he’d pursue in Washington. Where his most effective state policies relied on coercion and penalties, his federal approach depends on the purse. He believes the country can build 8 million new homes by 2037. Yet, it will require a $1.2 trillion investment from the federal government, and financial incentives to cities and counties who build housing.

“This is not about Congress taking over local land-use,” Wiener said during a news conference this week. “It’s about providing financial incentives. If you’re building housing, you should get money for that, and real money so that cities have an incentive.”

East Bay puts San Francisco on notice

Even with the recent state-level overhauls on housing, no significant projects have been built in San Francisco in more than five years. Despite hype around the city’s recovery, a single crane stands in San Francisco’s skies, and it’s for an academic building on UC San Francisco’s campus.

Capital costs, fees, and construction materials often bear the blame for stagnation. Yet, in the East Bay, cranes are going up. UC Berkeley has just recently broken ground on a 23-story student housing tower. A crane has risen on Oakland’s Telegraph Avenue for a 96-unit senior housing development. In May, a 240-unit affordable housing project is expected to break ground in West Oakland.

Sure, these are projects with special circumstances: affordable housing, student housing, senior housing. But the projects are still moving in a way they just aren’t in San Francisco. The city has 34,000 housing units in its pipeline that are waiting for the right conditions — higher rents, cheaper financing — to break ground. City officials are aware. Last month, Mayor Daniel Lurie and Supervisor Bilal Mahmood introduced legislation that would slash the city’s transfer tax — a premium paid on property sales over a certain price threshold — in half.

However, current macro factors aside, interest in San Francisco remains hot. The latest expression was a now official proposal from Prologis to redevelop the 20-acre Caltrain railyards into a modern mixed-use community with 2,500 new homes, 4 million square feet of commercial space.

The megaproject would include an 850-foot tower, and renovated Caltrain station that would connect the South of Market and Mission Bay neighborhoods.
The proposal, which could take two decades to complete, is reminiscent of Denver’s effort after the Great Recession to redevelop its Union Station from a crumbling port that housed a single Amtrak line into a multi-modal transit hub with housing, retail and commercial space. Completed in 2014, the project was viewed as one of the most successful post-recession developments in the U.S., and spurred billions in economic development around the station.