Different visions of a more affordable San Francisco are on very public display at City Hall this week.
The main event is Thursday’s Planning Commission hearing, where two bills to boost housing density from Sup. Rafael Mandelman, proposed earlier this year, are up for a vote. Mandelman, who represents the Castro, Noe Valley, and other central neighborhoods, has an approach that pairs a carrot with a stick. The carrot: Loosen zoning rules to allow modest density increases across large swaths of the city. The stick: Punish those who build massive single-family homes.
But city planners say Mandelman’s ideas, which are broken out into separate bills, should only serve as a starting point; they write in a new report that, in effect, Mandelman’s carrot isn’t big enough. One of their big ideas: Change the rules so that corner lots zoned for only one or two homes could instead accommodate six. (Planning commissioners will discuss the report Thursday as well.)
Planners say this more expansive view is possible because of new state housing laws. But their report doesn’t just look forward to a denser city. It also looks back at city history (including actions by past Planning Departments) that wronged communities of color and low-income folks. The new report has recommendations to grant residents new opportunities to stay, buy property, and build wealth that was systematically denied to previous generations.
San Francisco has spent decades resisting new homes, leaving a legacy of inequality, with nearly 125,000 San Franciscans spending a burdensome amount of income, more than 30 percent, on housing, according to the planning report. Those who can’t afford housing either leave or get squeezed onto the streets, with the city’s homeless population crossing the 8,000-person threshold nearly three years ago. (There hasn’t been a count since.)
All these burdens fall disproportionately on people of color.
High time for more housing
Mandelman’s carrot and stick approach and the planning report aren’t the only ideas in play. Earlier this week, another supervisor presented an alternative.
Sup. Gordon Mar represents the Sunset district, which is mostly zoned for single-family homes. Mar’s proposal would add price restrictions and minimum size requirements to new housing in districts like his.
It’s essentially a quid pro quo: If SF lets you build more units beyond what’s currently allowed, they must have at least two bedrooms, and the rent or sale price must be capped by what’s affordable to households earning the local median income, which in SF is $133,000 for a family of four.
Based on this year’s calculations, the allowable rent for a two-bedroom would be $2,700.
Introducing his proposal Tuesday, Mar said it would encourage density in districts like his that have not built enough housing, yet it wouldn’t rely on the “unregulated market driven by profit.” (The supervisor has also crafted a resolution that echoes the Planning Department’s goals of boosting housing ownership and expansion for underserved communities.)
Hanging over this debate is another issue. Nearly any building or project can be appealed all the way up to the Board of Supervisors, which can disregard the Planning Department’s approval or recommendation. That’s how Mar and Mandelman, along with six other supervisors, were recently able to reject nearly 500 homes that would have replaced a downtown parking lot.
Neither Mar nor Mandelman’s proposals would shorten the local approval process, even for small projects like a homeowner adding a second unit on her property. “We want to do upzoning in ways where we can apply local processes and rules,” says Jacob Bintliff, a Mandelman aide. “The supervisor doesn’t believe that building more housing is mutually exclusive” from keeping in place processes to delay or block it, adds Bintliff. “Zoning is what primarily stands in the way of housing, not the process.”
That said, the ability to stymie development, even when it abides by local guidelines, is why the state government has gotten involved.
A Capitol wave
Two months ago, California’s SB 9 and SB 10 passed, part of a long-delayed wave of rules that rose up as California sank deeper into its housing crisis. The lack of available options has hit even Fresno, some 180 miles away from the Bay Area.
(This wave, it should be noted, has San Francisco origins. It is based in large part on the work of former city supervisor and current representative in the state Senate, Scott Wiener.)
In short bursts, SF has seen more construction on the east side, but the lag in production over decades has spurred rent and home prices across the city to spike to staggering levels.
You probably know this because you live it: Nearly two-thirds of all apartments in the city rent for more than $3,000 a month. For home prices, all the charts look like hockey sticks, ever up and to the right. The market is distorted from scarcity, so although SF has relatively low eviction rates, the inevitable landlord-tenant conflicts — be it an owner looking to move in, or removal of property from rental stock via the state’s Ellis Act — become high-profile battles.
To stop pricing out longtime residents and have room for newcomers of all stripes, and to meet new state goals that require more than 82,000 new homes this decade, San Francisco must do far better than a few thousand new homes per year. That has been a consistent refrain at the Planning Department. In 2020, they estimated that to be affordable again, SF had to build 150,000 new homes in the next 30 years.
Building a fairer share
In the new planning report, upzoning low-rise districts is at the top of their recommendations. Specifically, all lots restricted to single-family homes, about 75,000 citywide, should be rezoned to allow two units, aka a duplex, which would bring the total to more than 100,000 parcels.
Upzoning could bolster the vitality of commercial corridors, which are peppered with empty storefronts: “An increase of people living nearby could support neighborhood goods and services that are currently struggling,” the report states.
The report emphasizes that rezoning is only one piece of the puzzle. Under SB 9, the city will have to make decisions on projects based on “fixed standards or objective measurements,” and that such “ministerial” approvals are exempt from extra reviews, like those triggered by California environmental law. That’s a big difference from the bills floated by Mandelman and Mar.
“There will be a conversation about SB 9 interactions — and about SB 9 implementation generally — as the legislation moves through its process,” Daisy Quan, an aide to Sup. Mar, wrote to The Frisc.
Letting people build isn’t the same as making it worth their while. An early analysis of SB 9 estimated it would only make only 8,500 more units financially feasible in SF. Mindful of this, planners say in their report that the city must offer loans and technical assistance to homeowners looking to add units.
This is even more important in communities for which urban planning created nightmares, not dreams. SF’s historically exclusionary zoning, rooted in racism, kept many neighborhoods out of reach to nonwhites — or, when nonwhites could afford to buy, kept them out anyway. In addition, city fathers of the past were all too willing to bulldoze Black neighborhoods and cut freeways through their heart.
Today’s planners have several recommendations to restore some equity for low-income residents and people of color. First, they support Mandelman’s idea of levying higher fees on large single-family homes. The money collected would flow into down-payment assistance or construction loans for other residents. The down-payment program also needs to help more families, with a target of at least $500,000 in assistance per property.
Planning staff also says that requiring a size minimum on new units, as Mar’s ordinance proposes, runs counter to a more equitable housing market: “Small units can help young adults start to establish credit or build wealth and help seniors to both downsize and stay in their neighborhoods. Additionally, small units are less common in single-family neighborhoods and tend to be more affordable by design.”
Mandelman staffer Bintliff expects the Planning Commission to approve his boss’s bills Thursday, and the next stop after some modifications would be the Board of Supervisors land use committee — likely early next year.
[UPDATE: The Planning Commission passed Mandelman’s fourplex legislation.]
In recent years, San Francisco voters have earmarked hundreds upon hundreds of millions of dollars to create affordable and low-income housing. There’s no question our city wants more of it. The next phase of discussion, however, is where to build not just that affordable housing, but more market-rate housing too. Thursday’s hearing will help set the tone for that next phase.
Alex Lash is the editor in chief of The Frisc.
Executive editor Anthony Lazarus contributed to this report.
