Abstract
Excerpted From: Bo Yan J. Moran, Gold Rush Anti-Chinese Racism: The Birth of San Francisco's Housing Crisis, 29 U.C. Davis Social Justice Law Review 143 (Winter, 2025) (189 Footnotes) (Full Document)
On its surface, San Francisco is one of the most progressive American cities, recognized by its iconic Golden Gate Bridge with its notorious fog and hills. Upon further inspection, San Francisco is also home to the booming tech industry, debilitatingly high rent, and some of the nation's wealthiest residents alongside a substantial unhoused population. The city is marred by its stark, overt wealth disparity. While San Francisco's pervasive housing crisis attracted significant attention in the midst of the economic difficulties exacerbated by COVID-19, it has been the subject of news coverage for decades. The juxtaposition of this perpetual housing crisis in this iconic “progressive” city creates severe cognitive dissonance. While many point fingers at the extreme wealth the tech industry infused into the city, the groundwork for San Francisco's current housing crisis was laid more than a century ago. The city's checkered history of housing restrictions stemming from restrictive covenants, exclusionary zoning, discretionary building approval processes, and active neighborhood associations fundamentally contributed to the housing crisis facing San Francisco today.
How did San Francisco get to this dire point? This article proposes that San Francisco's current housing crisis started, at least in part, from anti-Chinese immigrant discrimination in the late 1800s. These discriminatory practices began with the use of regulations to build bias and segregation into local zoning, a practice unique to the United States. The discussion of racially restrictive covenants is often tightly interwoven with anti-black segregation as a main motivating factor--an undeniable history over the subsequent 100 years. Some of the first racially restrictive covenants in the United States were created in San Francisco in the late 1800s in an effort to push out Chinese immigrants. The West, and San Francisco specifically, did not experience an influx of black people from the South until the second wave of the Great Migration from 1940-1970. Thus, the motivation for the original restrictive covenants primarily stemmed from anti-Chinese and anti-immigrant sentiment, unlike the more popularly documented restrictive covenants and exclusionary zoning in the South. These anti-Chinese restrictive covenants laid the groundwork for future exclusionary covenants and zoning aimed at other communities of color.
The effects of this era of overt anti-Chinese sentiment in San Francisco have shaped what the city is today. The discriminatory racial covenants used to corral Asians into one area and push them out of another evolved into elaborate, government-sanctioned exclusionary zoning practices used to craft a city in which Asians were not welcome. These zoning practices and racial covenants used a variety of disguises over the years to appear to follow the progressing anti-discriminatory housing laws, using terms like “blight”, “persons of cultural status”, or “free from attack from .... unreasonable neighbors” instead of “whites only” or “no Mongolians.”
A series of political and procedural developments in San Francisco city planning made changing zoning and city planning practices nearly impossible; the status quo established a century ago has become entrenched, heavily influencing San Francisco's current city planning landscape. The city's first zoning plan in 1921 is hardly distinguishable from today's.
This article proceeds in four parts. Part I discusses how racial segregation differed in the West, specifically in San Francisco, from the South and the Northeast in the late 1800s to early 1900s. This part also identifies the beginning of anti-Chinese sentiment in San Francisco and how it led to the first restrictive covenants. Part II tracks the evolution of residential housing restrictions in the San Francisco Bay Area over the last century. This evolution includes restrictive covenants, exclusionary zoning, and other practices used to accommodate the evolving law while managing to maintain the status quo and the legacy of racial restrictions. Part III discusses San Francisco's current housing crisis, identifying some current issues perpetuating century-old exclusionary zoning practices. Part IV concludes by examining what lays ahead for San Francisco housing as the city grapples with its legacy of structural exclusion and racism.
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While some might view San Francisco as a beautiful, golden city of opportunity, San Francisco's reputation as a city being crushed by its self-made housing crisis is gaining traction. Several other states view San Francisco as a “cautionary tale” and are taking action to save their own cities. In 2019, Minneapolis became the first United States city to ban single-family zoning. Oregon soon followed, allowing denser housing in most of its cities. When describing her authored law banning single-family zoning rules in Washington cities (HB 1110), Washington Representative Jessica Bateman said, “[w]hen I think of San Francisco, I think of it being an example of the most restrictive land use, which results in it only being accessible to people that have significant wealth in order to be there and to live in that city.” HB 1110 went into effect in 2023.
While authoring a law in her own state, Vermont Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale portrayed California as a place where housing instability is consistently escalating. Senator Hinsdale took further issue with “San Francisco and liberal bastions in California [which] have held themselves up as the standard for progressive policy ... [it is] a bit of a sham when you think about the many people who experience income inequality in California and can't afford to meet their basic needs.”
Other states like Colorado and New York have proposed legislation to force greater residential density, boost multi-family homes, and override local zoning laws, but have been met with great opposition, eventually leading to both proposals' death.
Some states' steps toward multi-family housing illustrate the growing recognition that single-family zoning inhibits the ability of people of all income levels to enjoy the benefits of living in a city. Single-family zoning does not only segregate people by income; it also exacerbates racial wealth gaps by increasing homeowner wealth and reducing renters' real incomes.
The question remains: has San Francisco taken any impactful action to alleviate these wealth and racial gaps? San Francisco will continue to face a housing crisis until it reckons with its exclusionary past. Its updated local policies promoting inclusion and fair housing goals are empty without such a reckoning.
The 2023 University of California, Berkeley study commissioned by the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD), found that San Francisco was significantly behind other California cities in its commitment to making the city 57% affordable housing. Based on this study, HCD sent San Francisco a letter on November 28, 2023 threatening to take punitive actions--such as the withdrawal of state funding for affordable housing and transportation projects--if changes were not made by December 28, 2023. With this looming threat, San Francisco mayor, London Breed, passed a Constraints Reduction Ordinance on December 28, 2023, which included “reducing permit approval times by 50% for most housing projects, streamlining paperwork, removing developer fees on some projects, removing barriers for office-to-residential conversions and reforming some zoning codes.” While this ordinance is a significant step towards implementing inclusionary housing and removing tactics that have maintained the exclusionary status quo, it came after the state forced the city's reluctant hand. The state of California is gradually dragging San Francisco away from its exclusionary history into an era of more inclusionary housing by passing state bills of its own and coercing the city to act.
Despite steps to address San Francisco's anti-black racist past, all these ordinances, proposals, and bills are not readily and directly responsive to San Francisco's specific anti-Chinese segregationist past. In 2023, the African American Reparations Advisory Committee released a final set of recommendations for San Francisco to provide reparations to the city's black community for the generations of systemic racism, including a lump-sum of $5 million to every eligible black adult in San Francisco. Despite enthusiasm from City Supervisors and Mayor London Breed for these reparations, and despite promises to set aside $4 million to open an Office of Reparations, the city has yet to act on any of these proposals. Mayor Breed has expressed her opinion that these reparations might be better suited for federal action. Regardless, these proposals represent some recognition for the effects racism in San Francisco has had on black San Franciscans.
As has been shown in this article, the history of San Francisco, and California in general, stands in contrast from much of the country, whose history is heavily entrenched in black slavery. San Francisco's uniquely consistent exclusion of Chinese people appeared in many different forms and under many different names over the last 150 years: racially restrictive covenants, exclusionary zoning, immigration restrictions, pro-American-only-labor advocates, the beautification of the city, and the eradication of “blight.” These exclusionary practices have been solidified by the more recent introduction and continual proliferation of procedural and discretionary city planning mazes. As San Francisco begins to take larger steps towards repenting for its racist past by alleviating the exclusionary housing landscape and recognizing its negative effects on black people, it must not neglect to reckon with its roots: anti-Chinese discrimination.
