The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted 9 to 2 on Tuesday to pass a significant set of laws intended to make it faster and easier to develop new housing in the city. Under threat of stiff sanctions, the lawmakers are on pace to meet a deadline imposed by state regulators, but late amendments to the legislation fly in the face of the regulators’ recommendations.
By city law, the bill needs a second yes vote next week before Mayor London Breed signs it. Only then will the California Department of Housing and Community Development, known as HCD, review the changes.
“If HCD determines that the implementing ordinance does not satisfy the required action and the deadline has passed, HCD … will start the process to revoke Housing Element compliance,” the regulator’s assistant deputy director David Zisser tells The Frisc via email. The Housing Element is the state-mandated blueprint the supervisors passed in January. Falling out of compliance risks penalties such as loss of state funding and loss of local control over housing decisions.
SF has the slowest housing approval and production process in the state, which suits some lawmakers (and homeowners), but which has put the city in the crosshairs of reform demands from Sacramento. SF must make room for new housing, more density, and taller buildings, especially in low-slung residential neighborhoods, or face state penalties.
The amendments added recently stem from concerns that rent-controlled housing and historic homes would be demolished to make way for larger apartment buildings. Yet some of these fears are unfounded; demolitions of rent-controlled buildings are rare, and the units must be replaced according to state law.
Calling the changes a safeguard, Sup. Rafael Mandelman sponsored an amendment that would compel special authorization through a hearing for removal of units in buildings that date to 1923 or before. The supervisors approved this and other changes, despite Zisser’s warning in a letter last week that the historic provision “could potentially limit the impact of the ordinance.” What’s more, Zisser recommended passing it “without these or additional substantive amendments.”
Mandelman also pushed for an addition to the law to curb new single-family residences that exceed 3,000 square feet, and to maintain special zoning rules to restrict what he calls “monster homes.”
If HCD isn’t satisfied with the amended version of the bill, it’ll issue another warning letter and give lawmakers another 30 days to whip new legislation into shape.
In the meantime, city planners and lawmakers have more work to do. HCD wants SF to show that it’s moving to end several other practices that lengthen the approval and building process. One example is forcing projects to meet an often-nebulous threshold of “neighborhood character”; another is requiring projects that build higher via the so-called state density bonus law to get special Planning Commission approval.
If by the end of this month, HCD is satisfied with the city’s progress, San Francisco is free to start the hard work of even more ambitious reform in the new year.
But if the state balks, SF could find itself under the auspices of the “builder’s remedy,” a temporary suspension of local zoning rules that has led to large projects being put forward in Palo Alto and Santa Monica. The state could also make SF cede control of housing approvals altogether.
Board of Supervisors president Aaron Peskin wants HCD to give the city more time and fewer deadlines. His resolution asking the city lobbyist to make these formal requests also passed the board Tuesday.
The resolution says “HCD’s singular focus on efforts to streamline market-rate development” doesn’t allow the city to safeguard “rent-controlled housing, the retention of neighborhood small businesses,” and “communities at greater risk and disproportionately impacted by displacement, particularly Black, Indigenous and people of color.”
Sup. Myrna Melgar, whose Land Use and Transportation Committee labored over the new legislation for more than two months, noted before yesterday’s vote that lawmakers and city attorneys spent “endless hours” wrangling these changes into city code. In their estimation, the original proposal, which came out of the mayor’s office back in September, was at odds with the Housing Element , which outlines how to make room for more than 82,000 new homes this decade.
Melgar’s committee colleague, Sup. Dean Preston, was one of the harshest critics of the original bill’s stance on demolitions. Still, he called the final version “much improved.” Melgar and Preston ended up voting in favor of the reform package on Tuesday, but Peskin said nay on the deal, which still passed with 9 yes votes; Sup. Connie Chan was the other dissenter.
The mayor’s office hailed the final legislation with a statement in which Breed declared, “We need to be aggressive in reforming how we approve housing.” Sup. Joel Engardio, a cosponsor of the mayor’s original bill, highlighted the new potential to build homes on the city’s west side.
State Sen. Scott Wiener, who represents SF and whose work in Sacramento has put in place stricter enforcement that’s pushing California cities to build more housing, called the vote “the beginning of a new day.” Last week he declared that the city was “playing with fire” not voting on the package sooner.
After Tuesday’s vote, the matches went back in the drawer at City Hall. The question now is whether supervisors feel lucky.
Adam Brinklow covers housing, development, and more for The Frisc.
