On Monday Oct. 20, many of San Francisco’s supervisors will attend the Land Use Committee’s weekly meeting to put forward a slew of final amendments to the city’s upzoning plan. As it stands, the plan allows housing developers to build taller, denser buildings in the city’s northern and western neighborhoods.
The amendments range from excluding historical buildings to excluding low-income blocks.
The state-mandated upzoning has divided San Francisco residents. To its proponents, upzoning is a landmark move for the historically anti-growth city. They argue that as taller buildings go up and the city gradually becomes denser, housing costs will decrease for future generations of San Franciscans.
Upzoning opponents paint a bleaker future: one where housing developers displace residents and businesses to build up — and there isn’t enough new housing to make a dent on affordability.
Supervisors have already announced amendments geared toward addressing some of these concerns. On Monday, District 7 Supervisor Myrna Melgar, who chairs the committee, will formally introduce her amendment to remove rent-controlled buildings with three or more units from the plan. This amendment is being offered with the blessing of the mayor’s office.
Other supervisors intend to introduce amendments that require new buildings to include a larger percentage of units with two or more bedrooms to make the plan more family-friendly, exempt some historical buildings from the increase in height limits and remove areas that have higher concentrations of low-income residents and people of color.
Three supervisors — Melgar, Bilal Mahmood, and Chyanne Chen — sit on the committee, but other supervisors can introduce amendments with their support.
After the legislation is amended in committee, it will go to the full Board of Supervisors for a final vote (making amendments directly at the Board is technically possible, but uncommon).
Contemplating the largest slew of amendments is District 1 Supervisor Connie Chan, who represents the Richmond, a district heavily affected by the upzoning plan. She has a list of 11 changes she’d like to see, including removing buildings in the city’s designated coastal zone, legacy businesses, and all inhabited housing — not just rent-controlled — from the plan.
“When we have good protection from demolitions and displacements in place, then what is left is the incentives for developers to really focus on vacant and blighted lands,” Chan said.
But some of these changes may not pass muster with the state. After all, San Francisco didn’t decide to rezone on its own — it’s required to by the state.
Every eight years, the state of California assigns cities and counties a certain number of housing units they need to build to meet housing needs.
In this last cycle, which began in 2023, the number of units assigned to San Francisco jumped from 28,000 to 82,000, thanks to a law passed by San Francisco’s state senator Scott Wiener.
“To be honest, it was a joke,” Wiener said, referring to the former state goals, which were far more modest and had no consequences for failure.
San Francisco is highly unlikely to actually build 82,000 units by 2031, since the costs of construction are currently very high. But the state wants San Francisco to create conditions where, if costs fall, that goal could be met. That’s where the rezoning comes in.
By allowing taller buildings and more units per lot, rezoning will lead to more housing production. In total, San Francisco’s rezoning needs to create the capacity for 36,000 additional housing units (around 58,000 are expected to be built under current zoning).
Any amendments that are made by the board have to maintain this capacity for 36,000 units — or risk the zoning plan being found non-compliant by the state, a finding that would take away the city’s power to approve or reject new developments and give that ability to the state.
In a Sept. 9 letter to San Francisco’s city Planning Director Sarah Dennis Phillips, Paul McDougall, a senior program manager at the California Department of Housing and Community Development, warned that while the city’s plan is currently compliant, the city should be careful about “introducing potential constraints on development.”
“Examples include adding labor provisions, removing and replacing sites, reducing capacity, [and] affordability requirements,” McDougall wrote.
Melgar’s amendment to remove rent-controlled housing should be in compliance, since the city already assumed that those buildings were not going to be redeveloped. But other changes, like Chan’s desire to remove all inhabited buildings, may have a larger impact on enabling 36,000 new units.
Avoiding a state takeover, also known as the “builder’s remedy,” has become a talking point that supervisors and Mayor Daniel Lurie have trotted out to convince skeptical audiences that they should support the plan.
Under builder’s remedy, “there could be towers everywhere,” Lurie told Sunset residents on Oct. 6.
At noon on Monday, Chan, three other supervisors, labor leaders, tenant activists, and supervisor hopefuls in Districts 2 and 4 will hold a rally on the steps of City Hall to discuss concerns about the plan.
The Land Use Committee meeting will be held in the Board of Supervisors legislative chamber, room 250, on Monday Oct. 20 at 1:30 p.m.