Something remarkable is happening in San Francisco: the city is actually trying to make it easier to build housing. And predictably, the same progressive establishment that presided over decades of skyrocketing rents and chronic underbuilding is now scrambling to protect the very policies that helped create this mess.

The targets? Inclusionary zoning requirements and the real estate transfer tax — two sacred cows of SF's progressive housing policy that have, in practice, made it harder and more expensive to build anything at all.

Let's be clear about what inclusionary zoning actually does. On paper, it sounds compassionate: require developers to set aside a percentage of units as affordable. In reality, it functions as a tax on new construction that makes many projects financially unviable. The units that would have been built — at every price point — simply never materialize. You can't live in a unit that was never constructed because the math didn't pencil out.

The real estate transfer tax tells a similar story. Layering additional transaction costs onto property sales doesn't punish some faceless villain — it suppresses market activity, discourages investment, and ultimately gets passed along to buyers and renters.

Now, with the YIMBY movement gaining genuine political power at City Hall, rollback efforts are underway. And the progressive response has been entirely predictable: frame any deregulation as an attack on affordability, even though their regulatory approach has delivered some of the least affordable housing in human history.

San Francisco doesn't have a housing crisis because we under-regulated the market. We have a housing crisis because for decades, every layer of government treated new construction as a problem to be managed rather than a solution to be encouraged. Permitting timelines stretching years. Byzantine approval processes. Fee structures that would make a Gilded Age toll collector blush.

The YIMBY shift isn't perfect — no political movement is. But the core premise is sound: if you want housing to be more affordable, you need more housing. Full stop. The progressive experiment in restricting supply while hoping for better outcomes has had its run. The results speak for themselves.

Let them scramble.