A provocative mailer by a deep-pocketed Los Angeles activist equates a state housing bill with “Negro removal,” a comparison that prompted state Sen. Scott Wiener and San Francisco Mayor London Breed to fire back Thursday.

The ad, paid for by Michael Weinstein’s foundation, appeared on cable television, snowballed on social media and popped up in mailboxes throughout the city this week. It features a picture of famous black author James Baldwin with a quote about San Francisco’s urban renewal policies, which displaced thousands of African Americans from the Fillmore.

“San Francisco is engaging ... in something called urban renewal, which means moving the Negroes out. It means Negro removal,” says the quote, attributed to Baldwin in 1963.

It’s juxtaposed with a picture of Wiener, whose bill, SB50, seeks to put more housing near transit stations and job centers.

“SB50 is a handout to greedy developers by Senator Scott (Wiener) that would make our housing affordability crisis even worse,” the ad says.

Wiener, D-San Francisco, has long been embroiled in a feud with Weinstein. The senator traces that beef to 2014, when he stopped the foundation from opening a chain pharmacy in the Castro neighborhood without a proper permit. The two have also sparred over HIV-prevention treatment PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis), which allows people to have unprotected sex without the risk of getting HIV. Wiener champions PrEP; Weinstein, whose AIDS Healthcare Foundation manages clinics and pharmacies that serve HIV patients, has called it a “party drug.”

Now the two are clashing over housing.

AIDS Healthcare Foundation “presents itself as a community-based nonprofit with ‘AIDS’ and ‘Foundation’ in its name, but in reality, it is a chain pharmacy and insurance company, labeled ‘nonprofit’ but with a budget in excess of $1 billion,” Wiener wrote Thursday in an email to constituents. He described Weinstein as “a mean bully obsessed with using HIV healthcare funds to engage in politics, settle political scores, and increasingly, oppose new housing in California and fund anti-housing NIMBY organizations.”

Those remarks drew a sharp response from René Christian Moya, director of Housing Is a Human Right, a housing advocacy division of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation.

“There’s this meme online that the only thing that drives AIDS Healthcare Foundation is NIMBYism...that we’re just here to battle Scott Wiener on Twitter,” Moya said. He argued that the foundation is looking out for the interests of people with HIV, many of whom need affordable housing. Political advocacy accounts for “a very small portion of its operating budget that’s well within the law,” Moya said.

The foundation sponsored the James Baldwin ads through a related group, Healthy Housing Foundation.

But if the fight is personal, the image and messages touch on a larger debate about SB50. Some critics say the bill doesn’t do enough to protect residents from displacement amid a construction boom, while others fear it will allow the state to supersede local control of development.

San Francisco supervisors marshaled those arguments when they passed a resolution opposing SB50, taking a stance that set them against the mayors of Oakland, San Jose, Stockton, Sacramento and Los Angeles, as well as BART’s Board of Directors. The Los Angeles City Council voted to oppose the bill this week, deepening a rift over how to solve the statewide housing crisis.

“I think the gentrification concerns are warranted,” said Laura Raymond, director of Los Angeles’ Alliance for Community Transit, a coalition of housing and tenant rights groups that worked closely with Wiener on SB50, though it hasn’t taken a position on the bill. The alliance was among 55 organizations that submitted a letter to Wiener last month, expressing “significant concerns” that SB50 would not generate enough affordable housing.

Even so, Raymond dismissed Weinstein’s rhetoric, noting that his foundation has a history of sending inappropriate mailers. Two years ago, he backed an ill-fated Los Angeles ballot measure to halt construction of tall, dense buildings. To drum up support, the campaign mailed fake eviction notices, which confused some voters and prompted a cease-and-desist letter from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

#SB50 is about tackling our housing crisis, plain & simple. It has nothing to do with urban renewal, & suggesting it does is deeply offensive to communities like mine that are still living with the consequences. @Scott_Wiener is an ally to the African-American community in SF. https://t.co/LMSmMNUyTS — London Breed (@LondonBreed) April 18, 2019

Ultimately, the stunt flopped, Raymond said.

“We saw in that instance that voters are smart — Weinstein wasn’t able to confuse the conversation,” she said.

Many of Wiener’s allies see the anti-SB50 mailer blitz as a similar sideshow. Yet the appropriation of Baldwin stings: the near-decimation of a vibrant African American neighborhood is still raw, half a century later. Some chided Weinstein for conflating that painful history with an effort to house people closer to their jobs.

“SB50 is about tackling our housing crisis, plain and simple,” tweeted Breed, who grew up in the Western Addition and Fillmore neighborhoods. She has endorsed the bill.

“It has nothing to do with urban renewal, and suggesting it does is deeply offensive to communities like mine that are still living with the consequences,” Breed continued. “Scott Wiener is an ally to the African American community in San Francisco.”

Wiener views the ads as a personal attack on his credibility, rather than a policy attack on SB50.

Moya disagreed, citing the historical relevance of the Baldwin quote.

“It was prescient of the displacement of communities of color that we’ve witnessed for decades,” in cities like San Francisco, he said.

Asked whether the ad would persuade people to challenge the bill, Moya paused a beat.

“I think we’ve already started to get a reaction.”

Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rswan@sfchronicle.com

Twitter: @rachelswan