But here's the thing: every time a project like this gets announced, it's worth asking the uncomfortable questions that polite San Francisco rarely does. How much per unit? What's the timeline? And most importantly — is this actually moving the needle, or is it another ribbon-cutting photo op while the broader crisis festers?

Because the broader crisis is absolutely festering. Walk through SoMa on any given Tuesday and you'll encounter the contradiction firsthand: a shiny new affordable housing development going up on one block, and full-blown RV encampments generating biohazard conditions on the next. As one Bay Area resident put it bluntly: "What happened to the BILLIONS spent on solving the homeless issue? Where'd all that money go?"

That's not a rhetorical question. San Francisco has spent staggering sums on homelessness — billions, plural — with results that would get any private-sector CEO fired on the spot. The Freelon Apartments will help some people. That's real and that matters. But dozens of units against a backdrop of thousands of unhoused individuals is a rounding error dressed up as a solution.

Another local noted the whack-a-mole reality on the streets: RV dwellers bouncing between neighborhoods and cities, some occupying the same Lake Merced spots for "10-15 years" with zero consequences. That's not compassion — that's abdication.

The Freelon project deserves cautious optimism. Affordable housing with integrated services is the right model. But San Francisco has a nasty habit of celebrating inputs — money spent, units announced, programs launched — while ignoring outputs. How many people actually transition to stable lives? How does cost-per-unit compare to other cities? Are we building efficiently, or are we feeding a bureaucratic machine that processes dollars the way SoMa processes foot traffic — slowly, painfully, and with a lot of people stepping over problems on the sidewalk?

Build the housing. But demand the receipts.