From one home to four sounds like a big step. Facing a California mandate to build tens of thousands of new homes, though, San Francisco just took a baby step — and it’s arguably in the wrong direction.
By a 6 to 4 vote, the Board of Supervisors passed zoning reform yesterday that allows four homes, or even six, to be built on lots currently restricted to single-family housing. It would apply to about 94,000 parcels across large swaths of San Francisco, including much of the western half of the city.
This change comes with big caveats, however. The bill doesn’t look much like the original proposal, which was written by Sup. Rafael Mandelman. First, it subjects some new units to rent control. Second, it requires buyers of single-family properties to wait five years before redeveloping.
“This little piece of legislation has had a very long journey,” Mandelman said before voting yes. “I believe this legislation is not what I introduced.”
What was already going to be a modest stab at boosting SF housing stock is now unlikely to produce anything, according to pro-housing advocates as well as the supervisors who voted against it Tuesday. “This will make it more difficult” to build housing, said Sup. Ahsha Safaí, who voted no along with fellow supervisors Catherine Stefani, Matt Dorsey, and board president Shamann Walton.
Showing how jumbled housing politics can get in SF, Walton objected because he believed the bill would actually encourage housing and spur gentrification in communities such as the Bayview, which he represents.
The vote comes as San Francisco must show California housing watchdogs a viable plan to build some 82,000 new homes this decade. The state must approve SF’s plan (and plans from cities across the state) by January 31, and it’s not going to be a rubber stamp. The housing agency already rejected first stab at a plan by Los Angeles. And California’s attorney general has vowed to police towns that try to evade housing obligations, as the tony town of Woodside tried to do by declaring itself a mountain lion refuge.
The new law replaces a clear way to build fourplexes with an impossible way and pretends it’s a victory for housing.
Annie Fryman
Not only will the heavily amended plan do little to move SF toward its obligation of 82,000 new homes, it puts the city beyond the reach of SB 9, last year’s state law to abolish single-family zoning that triggered this debate. “This is an end run around [SB 9],” said Dorsey.
Annie Fryman — who as state Sen. Scott Wiener’s top housing advisor from 2016 to 2020 wrote several housing bills, including the updated state mandates — called the new city bill “actively harmful.” Under SB 9, “you have a clear path of building a fourplex,” Fryman said, but the new law “replaces a clear way with an impossible way and pretends it’s a victory for housing.
Even the bill’s biggest proponents had limited enthusiasm. “Making small steps is better than making no progress at all,” said Sup. Myrna Melgar, who as the chair of the board’s Land Use Committee spent months sorting out competing “fourplex” proposals.
Mandelman said the amended bill was a positive step that both “expanded” and “contracted” the city’s housing outlook: “This is not the final statement on density in low-density neighborhoods. We may come back and revisit pieces. He also emphasized that the city needs to craft its own density plan to avoid the state completely controlling SF’s housing laws.
Yet the city still risks losing local control, or other consequences such as the loss of critical state funding for housing and transportation, if it doesn’t soon present a viable plan. Because of that threat, Fryman anticipates a mayoral veto or a state legal crackdown. The mayor’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
[Update: On July 21, Mayor Breed vetoed the legislation, and the state’s housing authority applauded the move.]
The bill’s changes were necessary to prevent real estate speculation and rent gouging, according to the supervisors who pressed for those changes. Sup. Aaron Peskin, who voted for the bill, criticized “YIMBY” housing activists who have come out against the bill in its amended form because “they hate rent control.”
Fryman, a self-described YIMBY, noted that the bill’s restrictions will make projects practically unfeasible: “If it was possible to ensure those units would get built and be rent controlled,” as can happen from time to time in SF, “that would be great. But that’s not reality.”
Peskin’s success adding rent control to the fourplex bill is a preview of a larger fight likely to come to the November ballot. The District 3 supervisor wants to add rent control requirements to new homes that use the city’s so-called density bonus, and cement those requirements in the city charter. To bolster his case, his proposal cites academic studies that show rent control would not hinder new construction.
But as The Frisc has reported, the authors of the studies cited say Peskin is misusing their work. Their studies in fact show the opposite of what he claims. “If you have rent control attached to new construction, you will not get new buildings built,” economist Ken Rosen told The Frisc.
That doesn’t bode well for the fourplex bill, which was already saddled with low expectations. As District 8’s Mandelman tweeted after the vote: “I share the disappointment of those who feel that a measure that was already modest & incremental as introduced ended up even more so after working its way through the legislative process.”