Let's be clear about what "affordable housing" means in San Francisco's political vocabulary. It doesn't mean making housing affordable through market competition, streamlined permitting, and abundant supply. It means government-financed developments that cost taxpayers a staggering amount per unit — often north of $700,000 — to build apartments that the private sector could deliver for less if the city would simply get out of the way.

The good news buried in this announcement is real: SF is apparently serious about easing building rules. That's long overdue. For decades, the city's labyrinthine approval process, Byzantine zoning codes, and activist-driven project delays have functioned as a de facto ban on new housing. Every economist worth their salt will tell you that the single most effective way to bring down housing costs is to build more units. Period.

But here's the fiscal conservative's dilemma. Rather than letting deregulation do the heavy lifting, the city wants to run both plays simultaneously — loosening rules and firehosing public money at the problem. The risk is that $125 million annually becomes a permanent fixture of the budget long after the regulatory reforms start bearing fruit. Government programs, as we all know, have the survival instincts of cockroaches.

There's also the accountability question. Who's tracking cost-per-unit on these publicly funded projects? Who's auditing whether the money is actually producing housing or just feeding the nonprofit-industrial complex that has grown fat on SF's housing crisis?

We're not against helping people who genuinely can't afford market-rate housing. But $125 million a year demands rigorous oversight, hard benchmarks, and — here's the radical idea — a sunset clause. Fix the rules, build the housing, and then prove the spending is still necessary. San Francisco taxpayers deserve at least that much.