Hong Kong faced this conundrum in the mid-20th century: Lots of refugee immigration, plus a major fire, causing an urgent housing crisis at the bottom end of the market. The city built massive, tenement-style public housing blocks, and never stopped building. Almost half of the population of Hong Kong today lives in public housing.
Wouldn’t work here. I’ve been to the housing meetings.
Basically, if San Francisco tried that, then the entire affordable housing budget would be taken up just buying enough land. As it is, the mayor’s office of housing and community development is going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on maybe a few thousand units. Not very efficient, and not nearly enough to make a major impact on the housing crisis.
Streamline the process, and you get branded as a traitor to the people and undoubtedly a peon of the greedy and corrupt developers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_Hong_Kong