Yes, shadows. As in, the dark patches that appear when the sun hits a building. A San Francisco supervisor is now pushing to eliminate shadow concerns as a basis for blocking new housing construction — and frankly, it's wild that this is even a fight that needs to be fought in 2025.

Here's the backstory: San Francisco's so-called shadow ordinance, Proposition K from 1984, was designed to protect parks and open spaces from being cast in shadow by new development. Noble enough in theory. In practice, it's become yet another weapon in the NIMBY arsenal — a procedural cudgel used to delay, water down, or outright kill housing projects that the city desperately needs.

The math is simple. San Francisco has a massive gap between housing supply and demand. Every tool that makes it harder to build drives prices up and pushes people out. Shadow analysis adds time, cost, and uncertainty to an already brutally expensive development process. And for what? To make sure a patch of grass gets an extra 20 minutes of sunlight in February?

As one local put it bluntly: "We've blocked any significant YIMBY change for a decade, why not try to block it for a century more?" Another SF resident offered a more measured take: "The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is today. We can't control the past. But if we start working on it today things will get better little by little."

That's the right attitude. San Francisco didn't become unaffordable overnight — it took decades of accumulated regulations, vetoes, and procedural traps like the shadow ordinance to get here. Unwinding that damage won't be instant either. But every obstacle we remove is a step toward a city where regular people can actually afford to live.

Stripping shadow reviews from the housing approval process isn't radical. It's common sense. The fact that it requires a political fight tells you everything you need to know about why we're in this mess.