In 2014, San Francisco’s sleepy Bernal Heights received unexpected acclaim. A national real estate site dubbed it the hottest neighborhood in the country. “Bernal Heights has ‘It’,” the write-up proclaimed, extolling the hilly neighborhood’s “small town feel.”
Since then, however, the one-square-mile Bernal Heights has been a very typical San Francisco burgh in one particular way: From 2015 to 2023, it grew by only 48 new units, mirroring far less “It” nabes like the Outer Sunset in its resistance to home-building.
The output, on-brand with many other areas of the city, has been so paltry that one developer’s hillside dream, seven years in the making, could add up to more new units than Bernal Heights has seen in the past five years.
The developer, Rick Bruce, has been trying in vain to build in Bernal for years, and thanks to a new state law, he could actually succeed this time. His 26-unit plan is being fast-tracked past much of the usual City Hall red tape.
To be clear, Bruce is trying something that, under previous rules and attitudes, likely would not see the light of day. He wants to build 26 apartments across three buildings, one of which would rise seven stories in this low-slung neighborhood, all while sitting on several lots that occupy a steep hillside. Three of the units would be below market-rate.
“The total height is seven stories, but only three stories at street level,” architect Jeremy Schaub told the San Francisco Planning Commission during a January 9 hearing. Schaub said he and Bruce have tried multiple variations over the years, with different combinations of taller and shorter buildings proposed for the many lots.
Not only will the buildings be perched on a steep hillside, they will also loom over public housing, the Alemany Apartments, at the bottom of the hill.
At the Jan. 9 hearing, two Planning commissioners expressed skepticism about the designs. “Good luck with that slope,” said Gilbert Williams. Commission VP Katherin Moore also noted the steep hillside and added, “I assume we have assurances” about the stability. (She also worried about residents managing the stairs, and about displacement of the public housing tenants if construction produces too much noise and dust.)
SF is under pressure to make plans this decade for 82,000 new homes, more than half of them affordable. It is well behind schedule. Bruce’s Bernal development is just a drop in the citywide housing bucket, but it’s one of the first under new state rules that could speed up a range of projects.
Yet Bruce sounds pessimistic about its prospects. “You can’t get there from here,” he says about the city’s entitlement process. At the Jan. 9 hearing, he heard commissioners and neighbors raising alarms about his project and couldn’t help but worry, despite fewer avenues left for them to assert authority over it.
Call it a case of developer PTSD.
Agile goat and speckled hen
In the late 19th century, Bernal Heights was mostly farmland tended by immigrants, described in an 1894 Chronicle story as a “paradise of the agile goat and speckled hen.”
Sadly, the goats have moved on. (Unless they’re on the job.) But even today’s Bernal with 26,000 residents cultivates a relaxed, semi-suburban vibe compared with the rest of the city. There’s plenty of open space and even a few semi-secret unpaved lanes.
It also has a reputation as quasi-bohemian and isolated from the wealth boom: “Very working class, very progressive, very LGBTQ friendly,” longtime Bernal Heights resident Stephanie Wiliams tells The Frisc. Williams has lived in Bernal Heights for 20 years and owns a pet supply store on Cortland Avenue.
She’d never even heard of Bernal Heights when her then-boss sent her on a dog walking job: “It was super unknown at the time, and it just seemed like paradise.”
Unlike the city at large, however, a majority of Bernal Heights residents (57 percent) now own their home, and the median household income was well into six figures here years before that became the norm citywide.
The publicity from the 2014 ranking “definitely increased [home] values and brought more attention,” says realtor Joske Thompson, who works in Bernal Heights. In December, an average Bernal Heights house sold for $1.53 million, according to the SF Association of Realtors, comparable to neighborhoods like Parkside and Cole Valley.
Another reason home values have increased: a lack of new homes. (While many people in SF insist otherwise, supply and demand does apply to housing prices.) Bernal Heights has “many residents opposed to changing the ambiance of their neighborhoods,” says Patrick Carlisle, an analyst with Compass Real Estate Group.
According to the Planning Department, 60 percent of Bernal Heights homes are single-family houses, and another 28 percent are in buildings with four units or fewer. Until recent local rule changes, almost every Bernal Heights property was zoned RH-1: for single family homes only. (RH-1 now allows up to four units, or even six on corner lots.)
But the area’s narrow, winding streets and steep slopes also mean that good construction plots are hard to come by. “There just isn’t land to build on there,” says Carlisle. (One large project is under construction with more than 270 units, but it’s only technically on the edge of the neighborhood, on Cesar Chavez Street.)
Bruce seems good at finding bits of land; building on them is another matter. He complains he was “dicked around” 20 years ago while trying and failing to build three houses on Andover Street, a main north-south road in Bernal. He says when he finally received permits, the 2008 mortgage crisis smothered his financing and forced him to sell the land.
Now Bruce says he’s spent years getting “dicked around” again on the current project. He doesn’t try to hide the despair in his voice.
Skip the hurdles
SF’s seven planning commissioners, appointed by the mayor and the Board of Supervisors, previously held sweeping power over San Francisco construction.
But SB 423, a new state law from SF-based Sen. Scott Wiener, has curtailed the commission’s oversight of multifamily housing in many cases.
When Bruce’s project went before the commission on Jan. 9, it was an informational hearing only; commissioners didn’t vote on the plan, nor will they. (Like all new buildings, the proposal, including the hillside engineering, must still comply with the building code.)
Bernal Heights is not included in the current draft map, nor will it be part of future maps.
planning department spokesperson anne yalon, when asked about the city’s upcoming plan to increase height and density limits in several neighborhoods.
Williams, who’s been a commissioner for nearly a year, asked if the city has any control over new buildings at all. SF Planning director Rich Hillis answered that the city still decides zoning: the broader rules about what kind of construction and how many homes can go on which properties. But SB 423 prevents additional scrutiny when buildings match the zoning.
SB 423 also gets rid of neighborhood review. Normally, SF law requires that a developer notify neighbors and hold public meetings for input. In the case of one major development in the Mission, this meant more than 150 hearings.
SB 423’s new rules have caught some neighbors off-guard. “This screams out for neighborhood notice,” one caller complained during the hearing’s public comment period. “We’re changing the area intentionally. That’s a concern.”
Commissioner Williams asked if the Planning Department can conduct neighborhood notice now that developers aren’t required to do so. (Hillis didn’t think SB 423 forbade it, but told commissioners he’d have to check the law’s particulars.)
Kathy Angus, spokesperson for the Bernal Heights South Slope Association, tells The Frisc she’s never heard of Bruce’s project and didn’t know about the rule changes under SB 423. Angus says she’s not familiar with the project’s details and declines to weigh in on its merits.
Meanwhile, city planners are working on a new zoning map that uncaps decades-long height and density limits. They seemed to be close to a final draft last year, but Mayor London Breed scrapped it. Under state law, a final version must be in place and approved by the Board of Supervisors by the end of January 2026.
The biggest changes are likely coming to low-rise western and northern districts like the Richmond, Sunset, and Marina. Bernal Heights won’t see drastic change, according to Planning Department spokesperson Anne Yalon: “Bernal Heights is not included in the current draft map, nor will it be part of future maps.”
But with new rules that promise less red tape, neighbors who fight projects that fit into lower local profiles, like in Bernal, will have an uphill battle.