The San Francisco Board of Supervisors gave final approval Tuesday to Mayor Daniel Lurie’s Family Zoning Plan, a package of housing development rule changes that aims to promote denser residential development largely in western and northern neighborhoods to satisfy state planning requirements.
The 6 to 4 vote, coming without discussion, culminated a lengthy and contentious process that produced what some say is the largest transformation to citywide land use regulations in at least half a century. Recently sworn-in Supervisor Alan Wong, who voted in favor of the plan on initial reading a week earlier, said he was absent because he was at a previously scheduled medical appointment.
Despite Tuesday’s vote, the debate over the Family Zoning Plan is far from over, with threats of litigation from different quarters, talk of a June ballot measure to protect renters and the potential for the subject to animate upcoming political races for seats on the Board of Supervisors and to replace U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi in Congress.
The City faces a Jan. 31 deadline, meanwhile, to meet a state mandate that it adopt plans to accommodate about 36,200 additional homes through 2031. Failure to meet that goal could mean loss of local development control and around $100 million a year of state funding for varied programs, city officials have said.
The additional housing units, created through higher and denser buildings, especially along transit and commercial corridors, would bridge a projected shortfall that could be reasonably expected with The City’s regulatory framework. The state Regional Housing Needs Allocation for The City requires it to plan to accommodate construction of 82,069 additional housing units by 2031 — plus a 15% buffer, bringing the total to 94,300 homes.
In most places, the plan will leave building heights unchanged at 40 feet, or four stories, with “modest increases” of two to four more stories near shopping and transit and on major streets and high-rises permitted only in limited areas, the planning department says.
Entities on different sides of the spectrum are promising to pursue legal challenges to the plan. An official responding to a request for comment to the Mayor’s Office about those threats said The City doesn’t comment on pending or active litigation.
Advocates say the controversial Family Zoning Plan rezones more than 60% of The City to allow denser residential buildings, though some pro-housing groups say it does less than advertised.
Supporters say the upzoning will reverse neighborhood downzonings adopted in the 1970s during a backlash against urbanism and racial integration that pushed new development to eastern neighborhoods while contributing to soaring housing prices and limited housing options.
“The zoning was a big piece, and that part I’m really excited about, because I do think that’s a huge improvement,” said Jane Natoli, San Francisco organizing director with the pro-housing development group YIMBY Action, who said the plan “could be better” but was a place to start. “But we’re still going to have to do work to make sure that it’s actually successful.”
Cranes are shown at a construction site in front of the skyline in San Francisco, Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2025.
Jeff Chiu/Associated Press
The mayor’s plan received coordinated support from housing-construction advocacy groups that included Abundant San Francisco, SF YIMBY and Housing Action Coalition. Starting in September, the coalition says it contacted more than 6,000 city residents in a campaign that included house parties, tabling, flyering, digital outreach and mobilizing attendance at legislative hearings.
Abundant San Francisco is closely associated with state Sen. Scott Wiener. He was the author of multiple pieces of state legislation that have pushed The City to accommodate more housing, including through the rezoning plan, notably by firming up rules on how state allocations for housing needs are determined for local jurisdictions.
Christin Evans, co-owner of an independent bookstore in the Haight-Ashbury area and a leader in multiple merchants’ associations, predicted the upzoning of land will raise property values, inevitably leading to displacement of lower income people. Not enough was done with the Family Zoning Plan to promote affordable housing development, she said.
Evans said she was in discussion with others about a potential June ballot measure designed to protect tenants in rent-controlled apartments.
“Those are exactly the conversations we’re having right now,” Evans said. “What is the best, most effective form of protection for rent controlled tenants, because this board has failed to do that.”
Lori Brooke, founder of a coalition of neighborhood groups called Neighborhoods United SF, said her organization will file a lawsuit demanding further environmental review of the zoning plan. Brooke is a candidate for District 2 supervisor in next June’s election challenging incumbent Stephen Sherrill, an appointee of former Mayor London Breed to the seat who voted in favor of the Family Zoning Plan. Sherrill and Brooke will run to finish former Supervisor Catherine Stefani’s term after Stefani was elected to the state Assembly last year.
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“The recently approved upzoning is not real planning. It dramatically changes our neighborhoods without adding any infrastructure requirements to accommodate this growth,” Brooke said. “San Francisco needs a smarter, more balanced approach that actually produces housing that is affordable for San Franciscans while respecting the neighborhood scale, small businesses and our existing residents.
Her group claims that The City’s zoning plan differed markedly from its housing element, which San Francisco adopted in January 2023 and the state approved, and thus more review is needed.
In particular, her organization says analysis is needed on the impacts of thousands of parcels added for upzoning, notably in northern areas like North Beach and Fisherman’s Wharf as well as in the Mission district and Noe Valley.
Supporters and opponents of Mayor Daniel Lurie’s Family Zoning Plan gather on the steps of San Francisco City Hall ahead of a key hearing Thursday, Sept. 11, 2025.
Craig Lee/The Examiner
Aaron Peskin, former president of the Board of Supervisors and supervisor for District 3, which covers the northern neighborhoods, warned that the zoning plan opens the door to tall buildings that will mar The City’s northern waterfront and “that San Francisco will live to regret for generations, if it comes to pass.”
Sherrill countered in a statement provided by his office that the approval of the Family Zoning Plan was “an important milestone for San Francisco — both to meet our obligation under state law and avoid a state takeover of our zoning rules, and to create a more welcoming, sustainable, family-friendly city.”
Sherrill, who pushed for amendments to the plan that lowered heights in some places while raising them in others and also to incentivize building more bedrooms, said The City has an aging population and very few children per capita.
“The status quo is unacceptable,” Sherrill said.
“Zoning is only the first step,” he said. “To achieve true affordability, we must also address construction costs, eliminate unnecessary regulations, and reimagine how we fund affordable housing. I’m optimistic and look forward to the road ahead.”
Yet two housing-production advocacy groups known for suing cities, the California Housing Defense Fund and Californians for Homeownership, raised numerous objections to the Family Zoning Plan in a letter to city officials this month and said that they would go to court to make their case if those matters were not changed.
Dylan Casey, executive director of the California Housing Defense Fund, said Tuesday that the zoning plan is a step forward for San Francisco, but that his group, for one, is committed to pursuing a lawsuit. Who would be participating and when it would be filed remained to be seen given that the state deadline for The City adopting a rezoning plan is at the end of January, he said.
Casey cited two major objections to the Family Zoning Plan. The first, he said, is that it won’t produce enough new housing, and the second is that the plan offers a local density bonus to developers if they forgo the state’s density bonus program.
“This, in our view, sets a very bad precedent for other cities around California, and is frankly illegal,” Casey said.
The groups’ letter to The City cited a recent San Francisco city economist report that said the Family Zoning Plan can only be reasonably expected to produce between 8,504 and 14,646 units by 2045, far short of the 36,282 units needed by 2031.
A lawsuit, the groups warned, could cause The City to fall out of compliance with state housing law and face exposure to the “builder’s remedy.”
The “builder’s remedy” is the colloquial name for a situation in which San Francisco could lose the ability to apply any kind of local zoning rules and be forced to approve any proposed projects that meet basic life-safety standards, no matter the height, according to the planning department.
The state Department of Housing and Community Development in September wrote a letter to The City saying a preliminary review of the Family Zoning Plan showed it to be consistent with legal requirements and other objectives and commitments from The City.
Supervisors proceeded to make a variety of amendments, with city officials checking with state officials to try to keep in compliance with the state’s mandates.