San Francisco’s year in housing and development was both historic and typical.
Early next year, when city planners release annual construction counts, 2025 will likely look like recent years. The pandemic’s economic hangover continues to blunt new development.
In 2024, SF added about 1,600 new homes to its stock, the lowest tally since a meager 1,586 in 2011. Save for a few large and much-needed 100 percent affordable projects, there won’t be much to tally this year either: the city reported a net gain of 2,521 new homes at the start of December.
But these low numbers of 2025 and previous years have brought about what makes this year historic. After decades of housing policy that discouraged and blocked new homes across much of the city, the tide turned this year.
San Francisco redrew its housing map, raising heights and allowing denser blocks in low-rise western and northern neighborhoods for the first time since 1978.
Dubbed the Family Zoning Plan under Mayor Daniel Lurie, the new map in fact started during London Breed’s tenure, spurred by changes to state housing laws.
Led by Sup. Myrna Melgar through months of contentious hearings and town halls, the rezoning crossed the finish line this month. The Board of Supervisors approved it 7-4. Lurie himself stumped for it before skeptical voters, framing it as a local bid to protect SF from state penalties like a loss of local zoning control called the Builder’s Remedy.
Lurie and other backers also said the plan was a necessary first step to build more homes and make SF more affordable. “Since the massive downzoning in 1978 that effectively banned new apartments on the west side, we’ve seen home and rental costs skyrocket,” Sup. Danny Sauter tells The Frisc. (The downzoning capped new development at four stories and prioritized single family homes, making new midsized apartment buildings impossible.)
Many opponents argued that the zoning plan will destroy rent controlled homes and displace renters and neighborhood businesses. Others predicted ruined vistas and neighborhood character. At the same time, they felt vindicated when the city’s top economist predicted the plan would result in less development than its backers hoped for.
“We’ve got this arbitrary housing element from the state,” Sup. Shamann Walton tells The Frisc, referring to the housing plan SF passed in 2023 that mandated this rezoning. “What we’ve really got to build is affordable housing.”
Before the Family Zoning Plan hearings began, Walton seemed eager for more affordable development in western neighborhoods but ultimately voted no on the plan, saying he didn’t believe it would deliver.
But opposing arguments, as well as last-minute legislative maneuvers to derail the plan, did not prevail.
Thousands more units
While housing production was low, several big developments made progress. Most notable was the 1,100-unit Balboa Reservoir plan near San Francisco City College. It broke ground after years of delay.
New teacher housing opened in the Sunset. Another teacher housing project broke ground in the Western Addition, as did a Lower Nob Hill development that will provide more than 300 homes, about one-third of them affordable. And 160 affordable homes at the old McDonald’s site in the Haight opened to high demand.
Several of SF’s big “multi-phase projects” advanced as well, including the Potrero Power Station site (100 new units now open) and the growing vistas of Treasure Island.
Sacramento continues to apply top-down pressure with new laws designed to push housing past local resistance. SF-based state Sen. Scott Wiener’s ambitious SB 79, variations of which he’d failed to pass throughout his tenure, won passage and will upzone streets near major transit corridors.
Wiener’s former Board of Supervisors colleague Aaron Peskin called it a “betrayal.” But SB 79 affects nothing in San Francisco for now because it allows for cities to substitute their own equivalent upzoning — the Family Zoning Plan, in SF’s case. Wiener spokesperson Erik Mebust says the provision is a way of “respecting existing planning efforts.”
But if SF’s new housing roadmap ends up too narrow, a real possibility, SB 79 could become the city’s law of the land. The law allows up to about 90 feet, or nine stories, right next to BART and Caltrain stations. Within a quarter-mile of stations, the limit would be a bit lower, and farther out — up to a half-mile — the limit would be lower still.
The limits would all be about a story lower at each tier for Muni light rail lines.
State legislators also approved a Wiener plan to shield housing development from the effects of CEQA, California’s environmental protection law. While CEQA still exists, most new San Francisco housing projects will no longer be subject to it, which could chop years off development times.
But more than any of these outcomes, the Family Zoning Plan will reverberate into the new year.
Improvements and politics
The plan’s boosters say it’s a starting point. Some are plotting improvements, especially to address criticism that upzoning doesn’t guarantee tens of thousands of affordable homes that the plan’s blueprint said the city needed.
“We need to fundamentally rethink how we expand our affordable housing supply,” Sup. Stephen Sherrill said via email, pointing towards ideas like Sup. Melgar’s complex tax plan for the west side.
Sup. Chyanne Chen ultimately voted against the Family Zoning Plan. But she first floated a separate but related package to strengthen SF’s tenant protections, which are already some of the nation’s most stringent. Her colleagues approved it unanimously.
For even more protection, Melgar and others would like state lawmakers to extend a “look back” provision beyond the current five years that governs how long a residential building must remain unoccupied before it can be redeveloped without constraint from rent control rules and other tenant protections.
State Sen. Scott Wiener agrees that a longer look back might be appropriate for some protections, even up to 10 years. “Five years is just a floor,” he tells The Frisc. Wiener’s term doesn’t end until 2028, but he is running for Nancy Pelosi’s House of Representatives seat.
The Family Zoning Plan’s opponents feel momentum in their corner. Sunset District anger over closure of the Great Highway to cars, which led to Sup. Joel Engardio’s recall, now includes the housing plan. “We’re weary of an approach that’s more bike lanes and more big housing,” Flo Kimmerling, president of the Mid Sunset Neighbors Association, tells The Frisc. “We don’t want someone who comes in with all the answers, we want someone who will listen.”
Albert Chow, longtime Sunset business owner, says the same, emphasizing that disgruntled west side voters feel shut out of city politics.
Chow is running to ultimately replace Engardio. Lurie’s first replacement, now a notorious SF political tale, flamed out after a week. The next replacement, Alan Wong, provided an important vote for the Family Zoning Plan in his first official meeting. Wong will run for election in June; the seat will be contested again in November.
The seat is one of five in play on the November ballot and, like others — especially Sherrill’s District 2 seat — housing could be the hottest-button topic. Wong tells The Frisc he wants Sunset residents to have a shot at owning a home and says, “I have lived in Sunset in-laws nearly my entire life.” Wong last week said he will support a new ballot measure to overturn the Great Highway closure.
Even with local and state rules now helping streamline housing approvals and construction, San Franciscans shouldn’t expect forests of cranes or packs of bulldozers in their neighborhoods.
That means projects that break ground — or in the case of a 25-story Marina apartment complex, eye-catching ones that are proposed — will take up more oxygen in the public and political conversation. We can expect that conversation to get quite loud.