SF's new planning director is an avid YIMBY, and doesn't appear to live in the city

The director of city planning is a department head, and a pretty powerful one: That person not only oversees the budget and hires the staff, but the Planning Commission often defers to the director's suggestions.

 But it's not a policy position, exactly: The Planning Commission sets policy, and the director executes it. That's how the system is supposed to work.

 In the past, planning directors have made their priorities (mostly helping developers) pretty clear, but have generally stopped short of issuing policy positions that might not be what the commission has approved.

 Not the case with Sarah Dennis Phillips, who was Mayor Lurie's handpicked director, hired with no national search, over the objections of three of the seven commissioners, who walked out of the meeting where she was sent to the mayor as the only candidate.

 Dennis Phillips made clear in an interview with The Frisc that she's a YIMBY: 

 She’s open in her praise of the YIMBY movement — part social, part political — that has elevated housing into local, state, and national discussions. 

“When I left planning over a decade ago there was no YIMBY movement,” says Dennis Phillips says, noting that the balance of politics has changed. “We’ve gone somewhere really fabulous the last decade.”

 She's also attacking the progressive increases in the transfer tax on high-end properties that the voters approved to pay for affordable housing:

A thing we hear from constituents in the development industry is, in addition to fees and sometimes inclusionary being a bit of a burden, the transfer tax is very high, more than double most neighboring cities in the Bay Area.

Three of the four planning commissioners have regularly challenged the idea that more market-rate housing will bring down costs—the heart of the Yimby narrative. 

So the director is taking a stance that may be in line with a narrow majority, but is certainly not the overwhelming consensus of the panel—and I know some of the commissioners are not happy with her comments.

I think she's also the first planning director in many years who doesn't live in San Francisco. According to her interview with the Business Times, she lives in Mill Valley. She does not appear to be registered to vote in San Francisco.

She talked to the Frisc. She talked to the Business Times. I asked for an interview, and she has not responded to me. (It's been quite a while since a planning director in San Francisco has refused to talk to me.)

If she would answer me, I would ask:

What if the Yimby narrative is wrong, as many academic studies show, and more market-rate housing will do nothing to bring down prices to the level that most San Francisco workers can afford to buy a home or live here without being rent-burdened? 

Then what should planners do?