"The RBA Potrero sellout"
San Francisco Bay Guardian

When the San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved a one-year moratorium on residential development in north Potrero Hill Dec. 14, the San Francisco Chronicle portrayed it as a blow to developers. But as Rachel Brahinsky reports on page 16, the biggest and most powerful group of housing builders in the city was hardly disappointed: members of the Residential Builders Association celebrated in the hallway outside the board's chambers after the vote, and RBA lawyer Alice Barkley hugged and kissed Sup. Bevan Dufty.

What was going on? It's simple: the RBA, with the help of an unlikely alliance orchestrated by Dufty and including Sups. Matt Gonzalez and Chris Daly, managed to ram through a last-minute amendment that exempted four RBA projects – one of them a whopping 450-unit apartment building – from the interim controls. Among the projects exempted: a 16-unit building on a lot next to the Anchor Steam Brewery that neighborhood activists had argued would be a threat to industrial jobs in the neighborhood.

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