At Bloomberg's Next Big Thing conference in Sausalito today, local billionaires Ron Conway and Chamath Palihapitiya got into a shouting match about how to solve San Francisco's housing crisis, and whether Mayor Ed Lee is doing a good job of it.

You can watch some of the exchange above. Palihapitiya was giving a talk, and things got heated after someone asked him what he'd do if he were Ed Lee, and Palihapitiya replied, "I'd resign."

As Tech Crunch reports:

That was the last straw for Conway, who’d been waving his hand for comment for the last 10 minutes of the session.

Conway is a close friend of Ed Lee and was a major backer of the San Francisco Mayor’s election campaign, dropping $275,000 to help pass Prop E, which lowered the business tax for tech companies in SF.

Conway finally erupted and launched into Palihapitiya, calling him out on his idea for contributing employee equity to the city and also about ridiculing Marc Benioff earlier, defending Benioff’s charitable contributions to the city.

“They’re working to make it a better city and so is Mayor Ed Lee, and it is going to get better, not worse,” yelled Conway.

Palihapitiya calmly responds with his own innovative ideas, but Conway remains incensed.

This was perhaps a little bit of tone-deafness on the part of Conway, who was defending Lee on the basis of building 30,000 housing units, a third of which are deemed affordable — we're all aware that the city's housing shortage is probably greater than that, and this still ignores the issue of the vast gap between income-qualified, "affordable" housing, and market-rate housing, which is now essentially a luxury of those making over six figures in San Francisco. Those making between $60,000 and $100,000 are left looking at Oakland, or elsewhere, but it's doubtful that Conway has heard that argument.

Palihapitiya's solution is to create an "equality fund" in which special economic zones are created that take 1% of revenue from all the companies that exist there and put it toward new affordable housing, rent subsidies, and education.

Conway issued a statement saying, "As a San Francisco resident who knows first-hand about the significant efforts underway in the public and private sectors to address the City’s housing crisis and widening income gap, it’s very difficult to sit quietly and listen to someone who is not engaged at all in these efforts spread so much misinformation."

Subsequently, Palihapitiya also wrote to TechCrunch to say, "I understand that some people may be upset with proposals like this, and I am sorry if it (or I) impugns people who they are close to, but in order to catalyze this change, we need leadership who can act independently and without sway from monied interests which is the bane of all politics, local and otherwise."

Apparently, Conway offered to set up a meeting between Palihapitiya and Lee to discuss his ideas, and Palihapitiya plans to take him up on that.

Meanwhile, it will be many years before anyone who isn't rich, by most of America's standards, can afford to move here.

[TechCrunch]
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