Once a year, San Francisco gives itself a report card on housing production.
The Planning Department’s annual Housing Inventory, which arrived this month, is as close to a no-nonsense, politics-free housing resource as possible in a city where every 2×4 and steel beam is politically radioactive. The lengthy report has no arguments, no public input, and no projections about the future. It’s mostly a tally of SF’s total homes — 413,265 to be exact — how many were built in the previous year, and a comparison to years past.
Of course, context is everything. SF has pledged to build some 82,000 new homes by 2031, more than half of them affordable, and proposals are emerging to make that easier, whether it’s through conversion of downtown offices or looser rules in quasi-suburban neighborhoods.
The latest inventory, which details how little SF has built recently, adds to the urgency. Here are the main points.
Housing production is terrible right now. In 2022, SF development yielded a net gain of just 2,807 new homes. To show how low that is, in 2021 the figure was 4,666, the year before 5,113, and the year before that 4,137.
In fact, 2022 approached the rock-bottom decade between 2006 and 2015, when the city added fewer than 2,200 new units in an average year.
The dwindling pace came from a confluence of spiraling costs, jumpy capital markets, pandemic malaise, and the infamous bureaucratic gridlock in San Francisco’s housing pipeline.
Among 2022’s new 2,807 homes, 43 percent were affordable, a much higher chunk than normal, which seems like a silver lining until you realize that total was in fact down 20 percent from 2021.
This is because San Francisco funds affordable housing in large part through market-rate development, a clunky system that’s often derided by people all along the political spectrum. So the less market-rate construction, the less space and funding is available for affordable housing.
Goose eggs. Here’s a sobering statistic: The Marina and Outer Sunset managed to add not a single new home last year. Bayview (“South Bayshore” in Planning speak), Bernal Heights, Ingleside, and the Inner Sunset also came close to zeroing out, with housing gains in just the single digits. (The report also notes zero new homes in the Presidio, but this of course is not unusual in the former army post turned national park.)
Indeed, nothing highlights the debate about zoning restrictions in the western neighborhoods more than the utter lack of construction in various corners of the city. In 2021 it was Ingleside, and for both 2019 and 2018 it was the Outer Sunset.
Ironically SF’s downtown, with crippling losses of office workers, hosted nearly a third of the city’s net housing gain in 2022: 922 units total. (Planning defines downtown as a triangle north of Market Street that includes the Financial District.)
It’s remarkable how, even as the city makes an historic drive toward greater density, so many of its residential neighborhoods have managed something like total stasis. The city has resolved to densify these low-rise redoubts — the mayor and the Sunset District’s supervisor are teaming up for new legislation — but for the time being they remain largely uncracked nuts.
Almost all development is big development. Although SF has long been infatuated with single-family homes (much like the rest of America), building bigger has become the rule of thumb anyway. Last year, nearly 2,500 of the 2,807 new homes came in buildings with 20 or more units, while buildings between two and 19 units accounted for fewer than 400. Only 18 were single-family affairs.
This is partly due to the shift toward more density in eastern parts of the city like South of Market and Mission Bay. But last year’s emphasis on big projects also shows how few developers of small or midsize projects can spare the time, resources, or years off their life to subject themselves to the interminable development process.
Nothing highlights the debate about zoning restrictions in the western neighborhoods more than the utter lack of construction in various corners of the city.
If high rises are the only game in town, then of course most of the action will happen in places, like downtown and SoMa, where high rises are allowed. Sure, there’s the proposed 50-story tower near Ocean Beach that would overlook the SF Zoo, but until it actually breaks ground, we’ll assume it has about as much chance as a koala that falls into the tiger pen.
Accessories after the fact. Nearly 10 years ago, a new law to ease the legal construction of backyard dwellings, granny flats, and other accessory dwelling units had some San Franciscans warning that “hidden density” would disrupt sleepy boroughs. Former Planning Commission anti-density stalwart Dennis Richards claimed the law could essentially double density on the west side.
Backers of the proposal framed it as a compromise to add more housing without too much new construction. “Better the garage apartment you know than the new midrise building you don’t” was the argument made to mollify NIMBY anxieties.
But since 2018, SF has added or legalized a bit more than 1,250 ADUs, which brings the total to nearly 1,400. If this is the pace to expect in years to come, all the earlier fretting looks like a tempest in search of a teapot.
In fairness, many of the forces that led to these 2022 results — such as COVID and the sputtering development market — were largely out of the control of major decision-makers; there is a valid reading of these numbers as “just one bad year” before new initiatives hopefully push trends in the opposite direction. Nevertheless, the city is left with very little cushion or margin of error in the years ahead.
At present, City Hall’s state housing goals call for something like five times the 2022 figures, a level of new construction SF hasn’t hit in at least 100 years and possibly hasn’t hit ever. It would be nice not to start right at square one, but that’s where we seem to be anyway.