The latest data shows rents surging across SF neighborhoods, with some areas seeing sharp increases that are squeezing tenants who thought the post-pandemic dip might actually last. Spoiler: it didn't.

Here's the thing nobody at City Hall wants to admit — this was entirely predictable. When you spend decades making it nearly impossible to build new housing, wrapping every project in years of environmental review, discretionary approvals, and neighborhood vetoes, you get exactly this: a supply-starved market where landlords hold all the cards. Every time rents dip, people celebrate like the problem is solved. Then demand bounces back, supply is still frozen, and we're right back to sticker shock.

The historical context is brutal. One local resident dug into the numbers and found that an 8-bedroom home in Bernal Heights sold for $145,000 in 1986 — about $443,000 adjusted for inflation. Try finding any home in Bernal for that today. A Noe Valley Victorian from the same era would run about $974,000 in today's dollars. The current market makes that look like a bargain.

As one SF resident put it: "Salaries were much lower, interest rates were higher, and those prices were more than they had been a few years prior. Even then, people thought the cost of housing here was ridiculous."

So what's changed? Not the outrage — San Franciscans have always complained about housing costs. What's changed is the gap between what we build and what we need has become a canyon. The city approved roughly 80,000 units in its latest Housing Element, but approving units on paper and actually getting them built are two very different things in a city that treats permitting like a competitive sport.

The fix isn't rent control expansions or more tenant protections layered on top of a broken system. Those are band-aids on a bullet wound. The fix is more housing — market rate, affordable, everything. Build it faster, build it taller, build it by right. Until San Francisco gets serious about supply, these rent surge stories will keep writing themselves every few years like clockwork.

Your move, Board of Supervisors.