In 1978, San Francisco enacted its great downzoning, freezing more than half the city into low-rise residential neighborhoods often restricted to single-family homes, and where, in terms of density and general aesthetics, little has changed since.
Forty-six years later, a new map has arrived. After a year of tinkering and often contentious public hearings, city planners have put together a final proposal that shows exactly where San Francisco will abolish decades-old prohibitions and encourage the construction of tens of thousands of new units in bigger buildings, especially along high-traffic streets and transit lines and quite possibly near you.
The new map goes to the Planning Commission for consideration Thursday, and then on to what’s likely a greater challenge: the 11-member Board of Supervisors.
The stakes are high, as the city must struggle to please (or at least appease) state regulators, who expect SF to make way for 82,000 new homes in coming years all while abiding by increasingly pro-housing reforms and local-level politics that cannot accept disruption of the lives of residents, privileged and marginalized alike.
“We clearly need to do everything we can to add more housing throughout our city to meet our [state] requirements,” senior planner Lisa Chen tells The Frisc in an email, but “we need to continue strengthening tenant protections and affordable housing policies everywhere.” (Editor’s note: Here’s a roundup of the latest research on how new construction makes housing more affordable, including for renters.)
The final interactive version of the map, now available online, is very similar to the version that’s been hotly debated since the end of last summer. (We’ve looked into the ways three SF neighborhoods — the Haight-Ashbury, the Outer Sunset, and the Tenderloin — might be affected.) So what’s different, and what can San Franciscans expect? Here’s an overview.
What are the biggest changes? Longtime height caps will double in some areas from 40 feet (roughly four stories) to 80 feet. Some blocks that already allow eight-story buildings will see increases up to 30 stories if they’re already high density, such as the intersection of Van Ness Avenue and Geary Street.
Other stretches, such as long sections near Geary and Larkin streets, will keep height limits, but the number of allowed homes per lot will increase.
Which neighborhoods will change? The most dramatic changes are proposed for Cathedral Hill, Duboce Triangle, Fisherman’s Wharf, Lakeshore, the Marina, Nob Hill, Noe Valley, the Richmond, and the Sunset.
The streets with the most dramatic height increases include 19th Avenue and Lombard Street, as well as Geary Boulevard and Van Ness.
Why those places? These are what the state and city designate “Housing Opportunity Areas” (once called “high-resource” neighborhoods). Whatever the jargon du jour, they are relatively wealthy and stable communities with desirable schools, green space, and other amenities, and where new construction will have minimal displacement effects. In addition, these neighborhoods have added minimal affordable housing, or any kind of housing for generations.
The city is saying, in effect, that the Marina, Richmond, Sunset, and other areas need to build their fair share. Chen writes in the final draft proposal that planners “focused on transit corridors, commercial corridors, major thoroughfares,” along with blocks with “existing infrastructure and […] the types of sites more likely to be developed and expected to yield the greatest amount of new housing.”
This does not mean new construction will happen in current low-rise neighborhoods exclusively. In fact, much of the city’s pipeline is counting on the completion of a handful of sites — new or reimagined neighborhoods — like the Hunters Point Shipyard, Parkmerced, Pier 70, and Treasure Island.
In the Sunset, for example, one-story home sites aren’t likely to become 14-story apartments. But elsewhere, property owners could make mid-rise buildings into high rises, and many empty or underutilized lots may see new construction.
How many homes is this going to create? The Planning Department says these changes and a raft of new streamlined regulations will create capacity for around 62,500 new homes. Now, “creating capacity” isn’t the same as actually building homes, as state law says SF is only obligated to plan for these homes. Actual construction depends on plenty of other factors, including demographic shifts, a more favorable economy and interest rates, builders’ tolerance for risk, and public and private funding.
Who supports the new map? Senior planner Chen, who has headed the effort to redraw the zoning map, tells The Frisc that she and her staff “generally heard mixed [public] reactions to the idea of adding new housing,” which is a diplomatic way of putting it. While planners tried to incorporate public feedback, it’s hard to find middle ground when a substantial constituency keeps saying “do nothing.”
That said, many of the city’s most ambitious housing hawks are also grumbling about the map, which they fear isn’t doing enough to deliver a blow to a seemingly intractable housing shortage and affordability crisis. In a December letter, SF YIMBY pushed supporters to stump for heights of 100 to 240 feet along major corridors, “at minimum.” Many YIMBYs also preferred an earlier version of the map, which not only increased building heights along major corridors, but also included a “buffer zone” on most blocks near those streets that would leave height caps in place, but do away with density limits.
Despite the negativity, the map has a good chance of becoming law because San Francisco doesn’t have many better or more popular options to appease state regulators.
Wouldn’t it be easier to just convert office space, rely on homes in the pipeline, or put more people in vacant homes instead? No, no, and hard no, respectively.
So what happens next? Acting director of planning Joshua Switzky tells The Frisc “there will be an uncertain number of additional hearings at the Planning Commission” before commissioners vote on the rezoning proposal, after which it will move on to the Board of Supervisors. No one yet knows when the package will reach lawmakers for consideration, but Switzky guesses that Planning Commissioners may vote “possibly in late March or April, but not before.”
The next commission hearing is February 22.
For more than 40 years, San Francisco has been living a double life: On one hand, it’s been growing and thriving for much of that time, but long has been afraid of enacting structural changes to match that growth. After decades of trying to squeeze new homes and new residents into a few corners of town, state law and city planners’ diligence have declared that that time is over, and SF now has to make an honest accounting of itself and its future.
Correction, 2/5/24: A previous version of this story said incorrectly that the next step for the map is the Board of Supervisors. There will in fact be more hearings before the Planning Commission.