Colin McKay

The people dunking on this photo have it exactly backwards. That’s the Outer Sunset, somewhere between the 30s and 40s Avenues. Those rows of identical stucco boxes were built by Henry Doelger, who from 1934 to 1941 was the single largest homebuilder in the United States. His crew finished two houses per day. Before Doelger showed up, this was literally sand dunes. Maps labeled the entire western half of San Francisco “Great Sand Waste.” Nobody lived there. Nobody wanted to. What changed: the Twin Peaks streetcar tunnel opened, the FHA started backing mortgages for middle-income buyers, and Doelger figured out assembly-line construction on 25-by-120-foot lots. He sold homes for $5,000. Adjusted for inflation, that’s roughly $125,000 to $175,000. A working-class family could buy one on $32.50 monthly payments. Those “cookie cutter” homes used redwood framing, which is why they’re still standing 85 years later while many luxury developments from the same era have been torn down twice. Doelger built roughly 25,000 of them across the Sunset and into Daly City, where they inspired Malvina Reynolds to write “Little Boxes.” The reason 90% of SF looks like this is because 90% of SF’s housing was built to solve an actual problem: where do tens of thousands of postwar families live? The Painted Ladies on Alamo Square and the Victorians in Pacific Heights survived the 1906 earthquake. They represent maybe 10% of the city’s housing stock. The Sunset represents the city that working people actually built and lived in. Here’s the math that makes this photo funny for a different reason. Those Doelger homes that sold for $5,000 in 1939? Median sale price in the Sunset District is now $1.63 million. That’s a 32,500% return. The Sunset is currently the most competitive neighborhood in San Francisco, with homes selling in under two weeks, often above asking. The “ugly” part of San Francisco turned out to be the best real estate investment in the city’s history. The fog-covered rows of stucco that tourists never photograph generated more household wealth than the Victorians everyone puts on postcards.