[Editor’s note: Part 2 of our recap — transit, streets, and schools — is here.]
In 1978, San Francisco enacted home-building restrictions that have kept much of the cityscape unchanged for two generations. The work to undo many of those restrictions began in earnest in 2023.
After a December 2022 come-to-Jesus moment at City Hall over the housing crisis, a plan to allow much more housing — some 82,000 new units by 2031, more than half of them affordable — passed unanimously in January.
The plan also received preliminary approval from state regulators, who had previously put the city on blast for its onerous building and approval process, the slowest in California. The city then had to start filling in the plan — known as the Housing Element — with real changes.
All this happened mainly because SF’s lawmakers in Sacramento have been pressing for statewide reform for years. One notable 2023 story was the bump in affordable housing thanks to a state bill once derided by an SF housing group as a threat to vulnerable communities.
Among the affordable projects SB 35 has helped speed was one championed by erstwhile SB 35 opponents, as we reported. (The law won extension and expansion this year.)
On the commercial side of real estate, office properties went into foreclosure or sold at big discounts. Several were on the radar as potential conversions to homes, and SF officials tried to craft laws to help. To date, only one building has been approved.
At City Hall, however, some habits were hard to break. Debate over a package of laws to streamline homebuilding (known as “constraints reduction”) became a forum for misinformation, acrimony, and delay. In October, Sup. Aaron Peskin, arguably the city’s most influential legislator, could have won a “Housing Metaphor of the Year” contest by comparing SF’s convoluted planning code to a pantry stuffed with old canned goods.
The Thanksgiving deadline to pass constraints reduction came and went, triggering a state warning. Opponents said they negotiated better protections against demolition of rent-controlled homes; we reported that existing safeguards meant the fear of demolition outweighed the reality.
With a new December deadline in place and heavy penalties looming, another opponent, Sup. Connie Chan, denied the existence of a housing shortage, repeating the falsehood that tens of thousands of empty homes could be filled and insisting that projects in motion, from Balboa Reservoir to Stonestown, show there’s no need for urgency: “We are building.”
Back to reality: In 2022, some neighborhoods didn’t add a single new home, and the numbers grew even grimmer this year.
Over Peskin and Chan’s dissent, the supervisors passed constraints reduction, and California regulators greenlighted last-minute amendments, including one to protect homes older than 100 years.
More changes are coming in 2024. There will be more fighting, but will there be more building? Backers of reform hope lower barriers and less red tape will offset economic doldrums and tempt developers to break out the cranes, jackhammers, and rebar again.
Homelessness 2023: Sweep battle, new plan, NIMBY efforts
It’s a basic but often overlooked fact: you can’t be homeless if you have a roof over your head. A home is no guarantee of a better life: San Francisco’s drug overdose epidemic claimed a record number of lives, more than 750 and counting, and a majority of the victims died in SROs and other homes according to the city medical examiner.
But living unhoused adds many more risks. That’s why SF streets, and the thousands of people living on them, remained this year at the center of an unresolved legal fight over the city’s right to “sweep” encampments to be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. If people refuse an offer of shelter, city workers can make them move.
Advocates say there aren’t enough beds, which is true when considering the entirety of SF’s unhoused population. At last count it was roughly 4,000, a bit more than half the total homeless count, although officials acknowledge the count is low.
With such great need, the city took steps to address a chronic problem of the permanent supportive housing (PSH) reserved for the formerly unhoused; about 1 in 10 units sit empty. Usually candidates for PSH spend months on a wait list, but outreach workers began offering them to a few folks right off the street. (The Frisc was first to report about the program.)
Advocates say officials exaggerate stories of refusal, while some homeless people say what’s on offer isn’t acceptable. There are people who prefer the streets to shelter: we wrote this year about the well-known street artist Jaz Cameron who once had an SRO room but felt threatened by his fellow occupants and now lives outside, somewhere South of Market. Cameron was attacked at his sidewalk “gallery,” and his friends and fans rallied to raise tens of thousands of dollars.
SF has committed to adding more shelter. A five-year plan unveiled this year calls for more than 3,000 new PSH units for all ages, more than 1,000 new shelter beds, and a 50 percent reduction of unsheltered homelessness — that is, people living on the streets — all paid for with a big budget bump that will be difficult to realize. Midyear cuts are already underway across the city, with more to come.
One new site that had funding approved in July was a particularly interesting case. Reserved for formerly homeless young adults, the 42-unit South of Market building (converted from market-rate condos) drew predictable neighborhood opposition, but it was to no avail. Supervisors approved the $30 million purchase unanimously.
Backers and foes agreed on one point, however: SF needs to spread low-income housing across the city, not keep it concentrated in a few neighborhoods.
The new citywide zoning is supposed to help, in part by removing bureaucratic levers that opponents pull to confound new projects, as they tried to do in the Sunset District after name-calling and fear-mongering didn’t work. In 2024 the political will to move people off the street and not just from sidewalk to sidewalk might grow stronger, but it must also hurdle higher fiscal barriers than previously expected.
Adam Brinklow, Alex Lash, and Anthony Lazarus contributed to this report.
