Earlier this week, in case you missed it, there was a judgment day. After more than a year of scrutinizing San Francisco’s byzantine permitting process for building housing in a first-of-its-kind investigation, the California Department of Housing and Community Development released its “accountability report.”
The review from the state regulator, known as HCD, lays out a long list of policy changes the city must adopt to fix our broken system, some within a few years, but many as quickly as just the next 30 days — a time line so un-San Francisco that the report may have set off either City Hall shock, awe, or shrugs when it went live on Wednesday.
The report has 18 “required actions with implementation timeframes,” as well as an extra 10 “recommended actions.” Among the imperatives is this one: SF must “eliminate the use of ‘neighborhood character’ and ‘neighborhood compatibility’ terminology in case report findings,” the state says, and within a year we must also scrub these terms from citywide design guidelines.
For years, San Francisco has effectively had two sets of rules for new buildings: Developments must of course adhere to planning codes and zoning, but even after that, bodies like the seven-member Planning Commission and 11-member Board of Supervisors can sometimes alter or even block a development based on, well, vibes.
“Say there’s a 65-foot height limit,” Rich Hillis, director of the SF Planning Department, tells The Frisc. “[The city] would then evaluate whether you can build up to 65 feet based on what’s nearby.” If the hypothetical 65-foot building was on a block where every other building was but two or three stories, it would often be barred for not matching the “character” of the surroundings — even though the rules actually say that a much taller building should be permissible.
Put mildly, developers, architects, and engineers do not like this; given the choice between submitting to this mercurial process or jumping into the bay, most would take the plunge, if only that were a feasible option. “It’s just made-up words,” engineer Daniel Barringer told The Frisc in May, accusing officials of basically making stuff up as they go.
One of the eight key policies set forth in Section 101.1 of the planning code is that “existing housing and neighborhood character be conserved and protected.” In the staff reports prepared for just this week’s Planning Commission meeting, the word “character” appears more than 60 times. Now the state says that’s all got to go.
Sources at HCD say that the city already committed to stop playing vague “neighborhood character” games in the new Housing Element passed back in January, but of course, officials haven’t actually followed through and amended the rules — which they have to do, or face sanctions.
“The state’s request is straightforward, and we intend to take action forthwith,” Dan Sider, chief of staff at SF Planning, tells The Frisc, adding that this is just one of what he calls “foundational” changes now being demanded. If the city doesn’t comply, we could lose funding for affordable housing and transportation. What’s more, the state could subject us to the so-called builder’s remedy, or even just take over the whole local process. (Read more here for what the builder’s remedy could look like.)
Hillis notes that in the past, Planning staff have usually recommended approval of projects that cleave to the zoning, although that recommendation left developments still vulnerable to political machinations and reviews at the Planning Commission or Board of Supervisors. Now those bodies too will have to adopt “the zoning is the zoning” approach — although as Hillis also says, the city decides what the zoning is, so we’ll maintain local control. We just have to be consistent about it for the first time in our lives.
San Francisco is about to embark on what could be a historic revision of the city’s zoning laws. For years, almost all of our new housing has been crammed into just a few corners of the city. According to data compiled by the rental site RentCafe last week, the city concentrated over 4,300 new units in just one zip code — 94103, South of Market — between 2018 and 2022.
This means just one neighborhood accounted for around 23 percent of the 18,650 units built in SF during that period. “This pace of development in such a short time frame surpasses the achievements of entire cities,” RentCafe’s Joanna Truscan writes via email. And yet, we can’t keep putting all of the eggs into just that one basket. Communities across the city are very likely to see more development.
To be specific, the state-mandated goal by 2031 is 82,069 new homes. Then there will be another set of goals after that, and after that. In the past, many cities including San Francisco would flout their state housing mandates, but now Sacramento is flexing its power to force the matter, and on a deadline.
There’s a clock ticking down for action at City Hall, and it has 28 days to go.