But here's the number that should make your jaw drop: roughly $1.1 million per unit, according to the city Treasurer's office.

Let that sink in. Over a million dollars — per door — for housing that's supposed to be affordable. That's not a typo, and it's not an anomaly. It's the cost of building anything in a city that has spent decades layering bureaucratic approvals, labor requirements, and design mandates on top of each other until the price tag looks like a Series B fundraise.

To be fair, the building itself seems relatively sensible. Large windows, a clean exterior, no gratuitous architectural flourishes that age like milk. As one local resident noted, SF affordable housing projects usually feature "tiny windows embellished in custom faux-metal-cladding 'fake balcony' architectural features that will look dated in 10 years." So credit where it's due — someone showed restraint.

But restraint on aesthetics doesn't fix the fundamental math problem. When a single affordable unit costs more than a median home in most American cities, something is structurally broken. Permitting timelines, prevailing wage mandates, impact fees, environmental reviews — each one might sound reasonable in isolation. Stack them all together and you get seven-figure apartments for people earning a fraction of that.

One SF resident summed up the frustration bluntly: "Peskin's no-build policy has absolutely screwed the next generation." That's hard to argue with. Years of anti-development politics have created artificial scarcity, and now we're paying luxury prices for modest construction.

SB 79 and other state-level reforms can't come fast enough. San Francisco needs to build — a lot — and it needs to do so at costs that don't require a small fortune in public subsidy per unit. The goal of affordable housing is noble. But when the process itself is the most expensive part, it's time to ask who the system is really serving.

And yes — pour one out for the 3300 Club. Gone but not forgotten.