An attempt to spread San Francisco’s homeless shelters and services more evenly across the city just hit a roadblock. Meanwhile, a similar movement for affordable housing — to make all 11 districts build their fair share — is a major part of the city’s full-court redesign of its housing rules.
SF planners are drawing a new map to allow taller buildings and denser blocks across many neighborhoods. In early 2023, officials pledged that of the 82,000 new units SF must plan for, 56 percent — nearly 47,000 — should be affordable housing.
Some affordable projects in the pipeline, like parts of Treasure Island, the Potrero Power Plant, and other “megaprojects,” can count toward that goal, but the city must still make room for many tens of thousands of homes.
Where will those homes be built, and who will pay for them? At the heart of both questions are politics and money.
In general, 100 percent affordable housing is politically popular. SF voters are happy to approve bonds to fund it, and good luck finding a politician to speak ill of it. But general support has yet to turn into more equitable distribution. Existing projects and those planned for the near future remain mainly segregated in a handful of neighborhoods.
“Wealthier areas, including many neighborhoods on the west side, have not been doing their fair share. Every neighborhood should provide opportunities for low-income families, seniors, and individuals exiting homelessness,” says Quintin Mecke, spokesperson for the Council of Community Housing Organizations, a coalition of tenant and neighborhood groups and affordable housing developers.
Of more than 90 affordable projects completed since 2015, nearly two-thirds were in District 10 and District 6 alone.
City officials are working on a list of potential new sites for each district as part of the proposal now dubbed the Family Zoning Plan. Some version of the package, which will include the map and a host of updated rules and regulations, must be approved by the end of next January.
It aims to loosen rules in hopes that neighborhoods that have seen little new housing — affordable or otherwise — for decades will start to host their fair share.
Planners and housing officials say they’ve already identified more than 3,000 sites that might yield subsidized housing. The search is focused on lots that presently do not have residential buildings for two reasons, says principal planner James Pappas: to make for a more manageable list, and to mitigate fears of eviction and displacement.
The search is also limited to lots larger than 8,000 square feet, or properties that can be combined into lots of at least that size. Districts 2, 3, 6, and 9 have the highest number of potential sites. Districts 1 and 8 have the fewest. But even the least promising district has 127 lots.
The department will not reveal specific locations, says Pappas, to avoid tipping off the city’s interest — or raising false alarms among neighbors, which could lay bare the raw politics of San Francisco housing.
All on board with affordable
Opposition to the city’s taller, denser plans is fueled by an odd-couple coalition: homeowners who don’t want neighborhood change or a threat to their property values; and advocates who say market-rate construction is nothing but “luxury” homes that lead to gentrification and displacement.
Both camps say they support more affordable housing. SF tenant organizer Shanti Singh says “people facing displacement” want to stay in their neighborhoods via affordable housing, but renters also want “upward mobility” — the chance to live in wealthier neighborhoods that presently build little housing.
Lori Brooke, cofounder of the group Neighborhoods United, wants more public investment in affordable housing: “If [the mayor’s office] wants to build affordable, they should focus on financing.”
When you look at everything on the way in the pipeline, it’s District 10, it’s South of Market, it’s the Mission, but it’s never the west side.
district 10 sup. shamann walton, on san francisco’s concentration of affordable housing in a few neighborhoods
Her organization rallies against height increases that “fail to solve the affordable housing shortage,” according to its website. The front page of the site also has a rendering of apartment towers blocking views of Pacific Heights residents.
The city’s YIMBY coalition also says it supports affordable housing — and new housing of any kind, anywhere.
Sup. Shamann Walton, whose District 10 has hosted the plurality of affordable homes built since 2015, says everyone talks a good game, but “when you look at everything on the way [in the pipeline], it’s D10, it’s SOMA, it’s the Mission, but it’s never the west side.” Walton says it’s an echo of SF’s historic racial redlining, which kept low-income and minority residents from living in many neighborhoods: “That’s how we end up with segregated cities.”
It’s not hard to find recent examples of west side pushback. In District 4, which has built only one affordable housing project in more than 10 years, a proposed eight-story building at 1234 Great Highway with nearly 200 homes for low-income seniors is prompting some recrimination. “Angry residents oppose the height of the building and that formerly unhoused people will live there,” Sup. Joel Engardio, who represents the Sunset, tells The Frisc via email.
Engardio says he supports all three current major affordable proposals in his district; all are getting public pushback.
Engardio’s predecessor, Gordon Mar, was tarred as a “communist pedophile” in anonymous flyers after backing a 100 percent affordable project on Irving Street. Engardio himself is facing a recall spurred by his successful campaign to turn the Great Highway into a car-free park.
Some Engardio opponents also cite his support for “luxury and market-rate housing” and say he’ll turn Ocean Beach into Miami Beach, a favorite line of groups opposed to the citywide upzoning plan.
Engardio, Walton, and the rest of SF’s elected officials say they support affordable housing. “You can’t ask a supervisor a single question without the answer being ‘affordable housing,’” real estate attorney Steve Williams told The Frisc last month.
But their political will could face tests when the housing in question reaches a certain size. And because of money — the other stark reality at the heart of SF’s housing conundrum — size is going to matter.
Economies of scale
In laying out its search plan for more affordable housing sites, the Planning Department calls “insufficient funding” the primary barrier to “building and acquiring” the actual units.
Many projects can cost up to $1 million per unit. “That makes it incredibly difficult to build anywhere,” Sup. Stephen Sherrill, who represents the Marina, Pacific Heights, and other wealthy District 2 neighborhoods, tells The Frisc. “We’ve got to get that cost of construction down.”
Easier said than done. The city can’t control the price of building materials. It is committed to union contracting, so it won’t cut corners on labor costs, either. (It’s possible it can try for more modular construction — something Mayor Daniel Lurie is familiar with — but broader adoption faces union opposition.) Sherrill promotes lowering city fees.
What’s more, money is in short supply. Federal dollars aren’t forthcoming anytime soon; in fact, Trump cuts to other local and state programs will make competition for surplus housing dollars even fiercer.
Planning’s affordable sites report notes that the city’s most expedient funding tool these days is debt. Since 2015, SF has voted for three affordable housing bonds totalling $1.2 billion, which has helped double its production. But in 2022, planners estimated it would cost $2 billion a year to build all the affordable housing in SF’s goals. The city cannot borrow at that level.
This is where project size and economies of scale comes into play. To make the most efficient use of limited funds, the city should favor affordable developments of 50 or more units, planners say.
In low-rise neighborhoods like Sherrill’s Marina, or Engardio’s Outer Sunset, or Sup. Chyanne Chen’s Excelsior (“District 11 is in desperate need for more affordable housing investments,” Chen said in a statement to The Frisc), larger scale would seem to be exactly what many residents fear.
But there are encouraging signs. District 2 has built zero affordable projects the past ten years, but Sherrill notes that a proposed redevelopment at 3333 California would include 124 homes for low-income seniors and says public feedback encouraged the developer to increase the affordable portion. “I think mixed-income projects bear out” just as well as 100 percent affordable projects, Sherrill adds.
Money is also the issue that pushes the buttons of 100-percent-affordable-only advocates. SF leans on market-rate development to create a good chunk of its affordable stock — either by including units within market-rate projects, or through fees that developers put into a fund.
Either way, the more market-rate housing SF builds, the more affordable homes will piggyback along with them. Problem is, SF’s market-rate housing outlook remains dicey, what with rising costs and tariff uncertainty. As the city planner Pappas notes, “Most developments are in the red.”
With little help coming from the state or federal government, San Francisco can’t afford to delay or water down feasible affordable housing if it wants a chance to satisfy its housing goals. Delays cost money. Smaller projects are harder to fund. And that may mean neighbors accepting new homes on their block, the next block — or any block.