San Francisco has a lot of housing issues. The next few months will be critical in sorting some of them out, and voters have homework to do too.
Thanks to a Board of Supervisors vote Tuesday afternoon, there will be rival affordable housing proposals on this November’s ballot. Whichever one gets more votes above 50 percent will become part of the city’s charter — a difficult change to undo.
One proposal is supported by Mayor London Breed and advocates who promote more housing for all income levels. It does not need the board’s approval to get on the ballot. The second, led by Sup. Connie Chan, saw significant changes recently, lowering the affordability bar to gain more support. Seven supervisors voted yes Tuesday to put it on the ballot.
Asking voters to sort out competing measures is “very dangerous,” Sup. Myrna Melgar told The Frisc two days before the vote. Melgar voted against the Chan measure, which she said was meant to “counter the mayor’s legislation, and the mayor put that on [the ballot] because she felt we couldn’t get our act together.” (The board had nixed Breed’s previous attempts to streamline affordable housing.)
The rival measures both seek to streamline review and approval of 100 percent affordable housing as well as teacher housing. Both would also fast-track projects that have a mix of affordable and market-rate homes, but differences lie both in the level of streamlining and the threshold for projects to qualify.
Chan’s new threshold is set at multifamily buildings with at least 10 units and 8 percent more affordable units than the city’s minimum requirement of 21.5 percent. A 100-unit building, then, would need 30 affordable units to qualify.
The mayor-backed plan also applies to buildings with 10 or more units, but it sets a lower threshold: the city minimum plus 15 percent of that, which currently works out to 25 affordable units in a 100-unit building.
The starkest contrast is in the actual streamlining. Breed’s initiative says “the [streamlining] exemption shall be construed broadly… and certificates of occupancy shall be ministerial,” which means a plethora of bodies and commissions could not butt into the process.
Chan’s plan is not as sweeping: While it calls for ministerial approval of projects “within 180 days of submission of a complete application,” certain details in a project, such as on-site parking, changes to the mix of apartment sizes, and curb cuts, could trigger lengthier reviews. The devil is truly in the details here.
There are also distinctions in the rules for hiring workers, which has prompted support of each measure by different unions.
“It’s an extreme way of doing legislation,” added Melgar, who chairs the board committee that is the first stop for new housing bills.
The move comes as San Francisco faces a state mandate to produce some 82,000 homes by decade’s end, nearly triple the amount that has been built since 2013. More than half the new homes must meet affordability standards, making it all the more imperative to sort out the rival measures.
However, voters will be spared a decision on another housing issue. In a surprise, a proposal to require rent control for many new homes was pulled at the last minute by its sponsor, Sup. Aaron Peskin. First boasting that he had the required six votes to put the plan on the ballot, Peskin nonetheless pivoted to say he would shelve it. He blamed opponents whom he feared would pour money into a campaign, all while taking swipes at pro-housing advocates in the YIMBY movement.
(In 2020, a statewide effort to reestablish rent control saw backers spend about $40 million and opponents more than $80 million.)
Peskin vowed instead to add rent control to as much new housing as possible through legislation. He also reiterated that rent control does not blunt the production of new housing. His ballot proposal, now tabled, attributed the claim to two studies, which in fact show the opposite, as The Frisc reported last month.
Peskin’s push could come soon, thanks to another development Tuesday.
The fourplex veto
Seven supervisors including Peskin failed Tuesday to muster one more vote to overturn the mayor’s veto of a high-profile housing density bill. The legislation’s failure means a state law that abolishes single-family housing remains, for now, the new normal for the city.
The law, SB 9, which was passed last year, allows property owners to build up to four homes on lots once restricted to a single home. (It has spurred very little activity so far, which SB 9 advocates blame on fees and other restrictions imposed at the local level.)
But SB 9 also provides wiggle room for local governments to craft their own versions, and SF lawmakers have wrestled for months to do so. Competing bills to allow up to four units — so-called fourplex bills — went through the legislative meat grinder. The one that emerged, sponsored by Sup. Rafael Mandelman, passed 7–4 last month.
Three supervisors — Matt Dorsey, Ahsha Safaí, and Catherine Stefani — said conditions appended to the bill would make housing more difficult to produce. “I’m not averse to incremental steps, but I don’t think this is a step in the right direction,” Dorsey said Tuesday. The main amendments to the bill were rent control for new units, added by Peskin, and a five-year ownership requirement before a homeowner could develop, added by Dean Preston.
A fourth opponent, board president Shamann Walton, rejected the bill as a catalyst of gentrification. They all held steady Tuesday, leaving the bill’s backers one vote short of overriding the veto.
Last week, state housing regulators applauded Breed’s veto via Twitter and said the bill would “render projects financially infeasible to pursue.”
The city has six months to show those same regulators a workable plan to produce more than 82,000 new homes by 2031. If the state doesn’t approve this plan, known as a Housing Element, the city could face legal action or other punishment, such as loss of funding for housing or transit.
It remains to be seen when — or if — the supervisors produce another fourplex plan. The Planning Commission last week narrowly approved a proposal from Safaí, which he has revived after months on the shelf, but planners recommended several modifications. To even get a sniff from the Board of Supervisors, the bill will need more changes, and Safaí signaled they would be coming.
Sup. Melgar, chair of the Land Use committee, is the first gatekeeper, and told The Frisc on Sunday that she objected to at least one element of Safaí’s plan: letting developers pay a fee, up to $170,000, instead of including one affordable unit on site. For homeowners looking to develop their properties, paying $170,000 “in addition to the couple million it’ll take to add units … would really hurt,” she said.
Safaí said at Tuesday’s hearing he had talked to Melgar about dropping the fee. When asked if that was enough to bring his bill to her committee, Melgar replied “I will answer that question when I actually see legislation.”
Safai also said Tuesday he was “committed” to include rent control in his fourplex bill. Peskin, who spent most of his time lambasting everyone opposed to his efforts, including the mayor and her staff, seems ready to demand rent control as part of any future fourplex bill as well. (Dorsey said he would work with Peskin on rent-control legislation when the board reconvenes in the fall.)
All the while, city planners must produce the city’s Housing Element for the state’s evaluation. Before it reaches Sacramento, the plan must get approval from the Board of Supervisors, which means first get through Melgar, Preston, and Peskin in the Land Use committee.
Correction: A previous version of this story misstated the qualification threshold for apartment buildings under the Breed-backed plan.
Alex Lash is the editor in chief of The Frisc. Executive editor Anthony Lazarus contributed to this report.
