Last week, San Francisco planners unveiled a new map meant to make room for tens of thousands of new homes, especially in low-rise western neighborhoods and along busy commercial corridors.
The plan comes two years after officials promised to make room for more than 80,000 new homes by the end of 2031, more than half of them affordable.
At first glance, the redesign looks a lot like the one city planners proposed more than a year ago under Mayor London Breed, who stumped for housing from the first day of her administration.
But closer inspection reveals the new map is a blueprint for many more homes, even on blocks where the allowable height doesn’t change. To explain the difference, it helps to calculate not how high buildings can go, but how many homes can fit within those buildings.
The technical term is density decontrol. In layperson’s terms, it means that a parcel with a single-family home could host four units or more, depending on building codes, designs, and the layout of the property.
If the new map is approved — it must get through the Planning Commission and then the Board of Supervisors — it could be the biggest change to San Francisco’s built landscape in more than 50 years, reimagining the nature of many neighborhoods from the ground up.
State Sen. Scott Wiener, who represents SF in Sacramento and whose legislative work has laid the foundation for the new map, says via email that it’s “a massive step toward breaking San Francisco’s decades-long cycle of underbuilding.”
“We have our work cut out for us,” Jane Natoli, organizing director for YIMBY Action, tells The Frisc, “but it looks like it’s going to be an actually good proposal.”
Where more homes could go
The new map, or “family zoning plan” as City Hall has branded it, could allow half a million new homes if everything were built to maximum height and density, according to city planners. But they emphasize that the actual count will be far lower. Not every rezoned lot will see new development, and not every project will go to the allowable limits.
Still, “the family zoning plan anticipates that nearly all projects in the area will take advantage of the density decontrol,” SF Planning spokesperson Anne Yalon tells The Frisc.
Here are several notable elements the plan would allow:
- Taller buildings on major transit and business corridors in neighborhoods including the Sunset, the Richmond, the Marina, Fisherman’s Wharf, the Haight, Upper Market, and Noe Valley.
- A maximum height of 65 feet, about six stories, along stretches of Haight Street, Church Street, Clement Street, Lincoln Way, and Balboa Avenue, among others. (Current maximum is 40 feet.)
- A maximum height of 85 feet along Fulton Street, 19th Avenue, Noriega Street, Taraval Street, Divisadero Street, and Geary Boulevard west of 3rd Avenue.
- A maximum height of 140 feet for corner lots on some of those streets, along with some sections of streets like Lombard, Broadway, and Geary east of 3rd.
- A maximum height of 650 feet along some blocks of Van Ness Avenue.
- Even where heights remain capped at 40 feet, “density decontrol” would remove decades-old limits on units allowed per lot.
- Builders cannot use “density bonus” laws, which allow taller buildings that include more affordable housing, to exceed maximum heights. See here for a more detailed explanation of those laws.
Planners produced what was supposed to be a final map last year, but Breed ordered another round of changes.
The new design, or “rezoning” in planning parlance, serves two purposes. One is to allow more homes. The other is to show state watchdogs that the city is making a good-faith effort to plan for those 80,000-plus new homes. If not, Sacramento could force SF to approve any project that meets basic standards, no matter the height.
As promised, the redesign has mostly spared areas that have been built up recently, like South of Market and Dogpatch, as well as “priority equity” neighborhoods — those with vulnerable low-income renters, such as the Mission, Chinatown, the Western Addition, and the Tenderloin.
Look within, not above
Taller buildings make for hot debate and fun headlines, and arguments over height will take up a lot of oxygen in coming months. But the new density rules will make a much bigger difference in how many new homes SF ends up building.
The bluish-gray lots on the map represent density decontrol, and they’re clustered in neighborhoods that rarely see new housing. In 2024, the Inner Sunset added just one home through new construction, Oceanview just two, and the Outer Richmond zero. The Outer Sunset built more than 130 new homes in 2024, only because an affordable teacher housing complex finally opened near Ocean Beach after a two-decade saga. In 2023, the neighborhood had nine, and the year before that zero.
(Alterations of buildings add a few homes in these neighborhoods per year.)
In the city’s northeast corner, where North Beach added zero homes through new construction last year, several blocks are slated for density decontrol. Building heights along the northeast waterfront could also go to eight stories. New D3 Sup. Danny Sauter says the Lurie plan “will allow more people to have more opportunities” to live in his district, and that major construction should focus on parking lots and vacant buildings.
He also recently told The Frisc that “more density near Fisherman’s Wharf is going to be crucial for the city’s housing goals.”
If approved, the District 3 changes would perhaps be the starkest notice of a housing regime change in SF. The district is the home base of former Board of Supervisors president Aaron Peskin, a longtime preservationist who staked his mayoral run on fighting housing expansion.
Opposition and objection
The Board of Supervisors must approve a new map by the end of January 2026. It doesn’t have to be this version, but it must be ambitious enough to please state housing officials, and there’s not much time left for revisions.
A series of public hearings will follow, starting with the Planning Commission tomorrow. In an email Monday, the local group Neighborhoods United San Francisco, which made joint appearances with Peskin during his mayoral campaign, encouraged members to show up to fight: “You will have no predictability in what could be built in your neighborhood.”
In the past we’ve seen housing on commercial corridors as a positive, like Upper Market or Hayes Valley. When new buildings have space for retail, they’ve added to the vibrancy of those corridors.
sf planning director rich hillis
Neighborhoods United did not respond to requests for comment. Some of their objections to the plan are misleading. They say SF has no housing crisis because it has “40,000 vacant homes,” a misreading of census data.
They also cite more than 70,000 homes approved in the city’s “pipeline,” which is technically true but ignores the fact that the pipeline count is like a marathon for first-time runners. It would be lovely if they all made the finish line, but that’s not the way the world works. Many either never get built or take years, even decades, to materialize.
Small business fears
Some warnings about the new map merit consideration. Could new construction push out small businesses along commercial corridors? Unlike residents whose building is demolished, businesses don’t have the automatic right to a lease in the replacement building.
Planning director Rich Hillis tells The Frisc the city is considering new protections for businesses, including potential relocation finances and advice. He also says planners haven’t seen a wave of business evictions after past upzonings and aren’t expecting one here.
“In the past we’ve seen housing on commercial corridors as a positive, like Upper Market or Hayes Valley. When new buildings have been built with commercial space for retail, I think they’ve added to the vibrancy of those corridors,” Hillis says.
Tenant advocates also warn of mass evictions if landlords seek to demolish or renovate old units out of existence. Hillis counters that SF sees only a handful of demolition-related evictions a year, including in areas with density decontrols.
A bigger dilemma is affordable housing. Tenant and neighborhood activists consistently call for all new construction to be affordable only — no market rate housing — but there’s no funding to pay for it at that scale. (In San Francisco, market-rate development must include a certain amount of affordable housing, either on site or through offsite funding.)
California’s housing watchdogs would also strike down affordable-only rules, even though the state’s own goals call for SF to provide more than 57,000 subsidized homes through 2031. Hope for more federal funding seems ever slimmer with the election of Donald Trump, and the city and state are facing budget shortfalls. Voters may have the chance to approve a new housing bond soon, but previous attempts have gone up in smoke.
The economic fears that Trump’s policies and unpredictability are currently stoking add yet another layer of complexity to San Francisco’s housing goals.
Planning for homes is one thing with tools like density decontrol, but actually putting roofs over people’s heads is another. “Builders are telling us they can’t do anything right now with components sitting in warehouses overseas,” says YIMBY California spokesperson Matthew Lewis.
With markets stalled and tariffs crushing the construction industry, it’s hard to imagine a building boom anytime soon.