Published Aug. 13, 2026at4:09pm
A coalition of YIMBY groups has filed a lawsuit against the city of San Francisco to overturn a local ordinance that exempts SoMa and other eastern neighborhoods from a state transit density law.
The law, SB 79, authored by state Sen. Scott Wiener, took effect in July. It allows taller, denser housing near public transit stops, creating the dense, walkable, transit-rich neighborhoods of urbanist fantasy. But in May, Mayor Daniel Lurie signed a bill that would exempt parts of SoMa, the Bayview, and the Bayshore from SB 79.
The rationale was two-fold. First, the mayor’s Family Zoning Plan already allows for taller buildings across the city. Second, SB 79 gives local governments the option to create and adopt “alternative plans,” provided they deliver the same net housing capacity as the state law would if adopted unaltered. But YIMBY Law and other groups are claiming that the ordinance actually subverts the state by repackaging housing capacity from the Family Zoning Plan and the state density bonus law as new capacity created by SB 79.
“It’s effectively triple-dipping,” said Ryan Patterson, an attorney for YIMBY Law, which filed the suit Thursday in San Francisco Superior Court.