San Francisco now has both a pro-housing mayor and a majority on the Board of Supervisors that shares the same stance, along with an established pro-housing coalition of advocacy groups. The city has come a long way from just over a decade ago, when addressing the issue at City Hall was still radioactive. That said, based on recent developments, housing policy in San Francisco will remain contentious for some time to come.
The State Mandate
The housing shortage is a statewide issue. But San Francisco remains where it’s considered the most egregious, even as late as 2023, when the city embarked on plans to meet a state-mandated plan to build 82,000 new homes over the next eight years.
The state mandate is based on legislation dating back to 2008, when the legislature passed SB 375, the California Sustainable Communities and Climate Protection Act. SB 375 addresses housing supply as both an environmental and affordability issue and is a primary tool for meeting California’s climate goals.
It also coordinates the process for regional housing needs allocations (RHNA), which sets existing housing goals for cities and towns with the regional transportation planning process, which in the case of the Bay Area, includes the merger of the region’s two Joint Powers Agencies governing planning: the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC).
Before this time, the RHNAs determined by ABAG were generally regarded as too conservative by housing boosters; the organization also had some other administrative problems, including a bizarre scandal where the agency’s finance director embezzled close to $4 million from a fund for streetscape improvements in a development area in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood, in part to fund a vacation home on the Oregon coast.
As housing in coastal cities becomes increasingly unaffordable, it incentivizes development in more remote inland communities. This increases the climate burden due to increased carbon emissions associated with more car commuting and the use of climate control in hotter, inland homes. To this end, SB 375 addressed these problems by encouraging cities to plan for a sufficient number of homes so that people can afford to live closer to their workplaces.
This brings us back to San Francisco, which, as an innovation hub for knowledge-based industries, will always attract career starters and service workers. The problem is that now housing is unaffordable mainly for this class of worker, creating an increasingly unsustainable dilemma for the city. As Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson write in their new book, Abundance, “The money you save in rent doesn’t make up for the talent and knowledge that dissipate over distance.”
San Francisco and the loss of ‘Family Housing’
San Francisco’s population in 1950 was 775,357. Thereafter, the city experienced three decades of population decline to under 680,000 by 1980. “Urban Renewal”-inspired policy displaced much of the city’s working class and initiated a generation-long erosion of the Black community through the forcible reshaping of the South of Market and Western Addition neighborhoods. It made downtown essentially a residence-free showcase for commuters. In response, community groups with progressive allies at City Hall downzoned existing residential neighborhoods, creating the urban pattern we still primarily see today, where a suburban vibe dominates west of Divisadero.
While the laws have been passed, there has been little progress in building new housing, and the west side of San Francisco remains essentially “locked in amber.”
Despite recovery and further growth in the city’s population since 1990, political support for preserving the downzoning policies of the 1970s fostered by a coalition of homeowners’ associations, nonprofit subsidized housing providers, and building trades unions has led to a severely inflated housing market, with an increasing number of households priced out of the city to the point where the upper middle class can no longer afford family housing. Housing scarcity in San Francisco makes it impossible for new workers to start families and stay in the city. It has reached the point where extreme solutions and unsustainable group housing schemes which violate fair housing laws, such as $700 bunk beds, have become common.
Rise of the YIMBYS
The year 2014 marked the beginning of “Yes In My Backyard” activism in the Bay Area, when Sonja Trauss, Laura Foote, and other activists, mainly career starters in the technology industry, teachers, or service workers, began to advocate for more housing and engage in electoral politics. Aided by the tech industry, the movement has helped create a pro-housing environment at City Hall, as well as in Sacramento, where state Senator Scott Wiener and colleagues continue to work on laws that apply further pressure on San Francisco and other cities.
Along with YIMBY activism have come some demographic changes, resulting from the new development allowed under the old regime, which was almost exclusively in the South of Market neighborhoods. Young professionals living in the new SoMa often voted YIMBY. By the 2020s, Mayor London Breed and pro-housing supervisors passed legislation aimed at densifying neighborhoods along transit corridors and began designating parts of the west side for higher density.
While the laws have been passed, there has been little progress in building new housing, and the west side of San Francisco remains essentially “locked in amber.” The narrative on more construction has focused on other obstacles to building, such as construction costs and the highly bureaucratic permit pipeline. At the state level, zoning for single-family homes has been largely abolished.
Recent Moves
Meanwhile, the slow-growth juggernaut has been in vigilance mode, egged on by reports of ghost projects, such as a 50-story condominium tower that threatened to turn parts of Ocean Beach into a giant sundial. The project, which had no viability and was likely a publicity stunt, helped jump-start a new movement in the no-growth alliance. This alliance threatens to counter upzoning with opposing ballot initiatives or lawsuits, as well as a plan to have all of North Beach declared a federal historic district.
New legislation introduced by newly elected mayor Daniel Lurie looks to take things up a notch. Lurie, who defeated Breed in the 2024 election, has introduced legislation his office calls “family zoning,” which further increases density and, in some cases, height along the city’s main drags, particularly on the west side. It dovetails with previous pro-housing legislation from Breed and pro-housing Supervisors such as Board President Rafael Mandelman and Myrna Melgar, aimed at meeting the 80,000-plus home production target.
The reaction from the slow-growth alliance was a show of force at an April 10 Planning Commission hearing. Despite being an informational presentation with no action taken, the hearing included nearly five hours of public comment. What was noteworthy was the complexion of the comments: there was far more pro-housing testimony than at past meetings. According to a Planning Department spokesperson, the new plan will likely be deliberated by the supervisors in the fall, sometime after June’s highly contentious budget process.
Own Goal: Proposition K
In the meantime, the passage of Proposition K, the ballot measure to close the Upper Great Highway to car traffic, has created another political divide with possible blowback on the YIMBYs. While the measure won citywide, it was uniformly opposed on the west side, and has already contributed to increased traffic problems in the Sunset District, as well as significant resentment against YIMBY allies in the safe streets and transit lobby. Moreover, it has spurred a recall effort against pro-housing District 4 Supervisor Joel Engardio, who supported Proposition K.
The San Francisco Labor Council, a nominal if unreliable ally of the anti-housing groups, opposed Proposition K and once had a lock on both the Richmond and Sunset supervisorial seats. Its vassal, Richmond Supervisor Connie Chan, is mulling another ballot measure to undo Proposition K.
If the petition against Engardio is successful, he will face a recall vote in the fall, after the budget process. If Engardio is recalled, the pro-housing majority on the Board of Supervisors vanishes, at least for a while. Lurie would appoint his replacement — will the intervening budget process influence his decision, given that the anti-housing Labor Council will vie to regain control of that seat?
Meanwhile, the pressure for more housing in San Francisco will continue to increase.