MEDA — the Mission Economic Development Agency, one of the city's go-to affordable housing nonprofits — just laid off a dozen workers and slashed salaries across the organization. This comes months after the city approved a staggering $37.8 million rescue package to bail out the nonprofit's troubled housing units.

Let that sink in. Nearly $38 million in public money, and the organization is still hemorrhaging.

This is the fundamental problem with San Francisco's approach to affordable housing: we keep writing enormous checks to nonprofits with little accountability, then act shocked when the money evaporates and the problems persist. MEDA isn't some scrappy startup running on fumes and good intentions. They're a major player in the city's housing apparatus, entrusted with tens of millions of dollars to develop and manage units that real people depend on.

So where did the money go? How did an organization that just received one of the largest nonprofit rescue packages in recent city history end up cutting staff almost immediately afterward? These are questions the Board of Supervisors should be asking loudly and publicly — but don't hold your breath.

As one SF resident put it, "The city just keeps shoveling money into a furnace and wondering why the house is still cold."

The deeper issue here isn't that affordable housing is a bad goal — it's that the city has built an ecosystem of nonprofit developers that operate with the spending habits of a tech startup flush with Series B funding and the oversight of... well, nobody. When things go sideways, taxpayers foot the bill, workers lose their jobs, and the people who actually need affordable housing are left wondering if their building will be properly managed next year.

San Francisco spent over $1.2 billion on homelessness and housing last fiscal year. At some point, we have to start asking not just how much we're spending, but what we're getting for it. MEDA's crisis isn't an anomaly — it's a symptom of a system that rewards good intentions over good management.

Accountability isn't a conservative value. It's just common sense.