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Editor’s Note: Zelda Bronstein, formerly Berkeley Planning Commission chair and Daily Planet Public Eye columnist, has an ongoing series of articles on San Francisco’s 48 Hills news site which spotlights the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a limited liability for-profit corporation which is funded by Facebook stock owned by founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan.

The corporation (known as CZI) mimics non-profit foundations by making grants to groups which advance its political/policy agenda. The latest piece in the series reveals CZI’s $750,000 investment in creating a KQED radio news desk which has showcased CZI’s view of remedies for what’s called the California housing crisis under the unwittingly ironic title of “Sold Out”.

The KQED programs and podcasts rely on a theory championed by, among others, San Francisco state Senator Scott Wiener, Berkeley Senator Nancy Skinner and their YIMBY allies, well-funded activists who contend that increasing urban density all over California, regardless of how much it costs tenants and home-buyers, will eventually cause some housing to become magically affordable for low income people. In Berkeley, Councilmember Lori Droste is the most prominent supporter of these ideas.

This is what’s called supply-side economics by its fans and “trickle-down” by its critics. And non-CZI academic research shows that trickle-down doesn’t.

But CZI money has gone to a variety of think-tank-like centers which have been cited by the Sold Out series. Wienerite advocates in the Califoria legislature have been fronting a variety of bills aimed at shifting control of land use away from regional and local governments to state agencies, and they rely on these CZI-funded organizations to back up their plans and even to draft laws.

Here’s how Bronstein’s exposé starts:

In 2019, I reported in 48 Hills that the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative was using mega-grants to shape California housing law and policy. CZI gave Enterprise Community Partners $500,000 to draft and then lobby for Assemblymember David Chiu’s AB 1487, the law that authorized the Metropolitan Transportation Commission to become a one-stop regional planning agency overseeing transportation and housing and to levy taxes on the nine-county Bay Area; CZI formally endorsed that bill.

CZI also gave the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley nearly a million dollars: $440,000 for unspecified uses and $500,000 to start a Housing Lab—essentially, a development incubator under the aegis of the celebrated public university.

I didn’t realize that Chan Zuckerberg was also using its largesse to try to shape California housing news.

KQED’s housing series was funded with Facebook money.

For starters: In 2019, CZI gave KQED $750,000 to help launch what the NPR station called a “dedicated housing news desk to cover the Bay Area’s housing and affordability crisis.” A November 2019 announcement from KQED said that the desk would open the following month. 

The CZI-funded housing news desk caught my attention in October 2020, when its SOLD OUT series turned to zoning, with a podcast entitled “Zoning Out” and an online print piece headlined “The Racist History of Single-Family Home Zoning” and credited to Erin Baldassari and Molly Solomon. My interest was further piqued by SOLD OUT’s subsequent treatments of zoning, all rehashes of the October show, though the segment broadcast by NPR’s Weekend Edition in March relocated the basic story to Sacramento: 

February 16: “California Cities Rethink the Single-family Neighborhood,” 1662-word print piece by Baldassari 

February 24: “You Had Questions, We’ve Got Answers” (also headlined as “The Big Updates You Need to Know About California’s Housing Crisis”); a conversation between Baldassari and Solomon 

March 13, 2021: “Facing Housing Crunch, California Cities Rethink Single-Family Neighborhoods,” transcript of four-minute segment narrated by Baldassari and heard on NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday 

March 13, 2021: “Facing Housing Crunch, California Cities Rethink Single-Family Neighborhoods,” Baldassari’s online print version (not a transcript) of the NPR segment 

March 15, 2021: “’A First Big Step’: Bay Area Cities are Rethinking Single-Family Zoning”; a conversation between Baldassari and KQED Editor Alan Montecillo interspersed with short clips from prior SOLD OUT programs 

KQED says SOLD OUT provides “in-depth reporting on the housing crisis.” Maybe so, but its coverage of zoning is credulous, misleading, and confused. 

The KQED reporters cover a lot of ground, so this is a long piece. 

You can read the rest of the story on the 48 Hills site.