Early in his career as a California state senator, Scott Wiener got a law passed that overhauled the way jurisdictions received state housing-production goals. Its advocates said previous standards had been ineffective at spurring local governments to plan for enough development.
The effect of the new data requirements in Wiener’s 2018 Senate Bill 828 — which included measures of unmet existing needs such as overcrowding and cost burdens — proved to be dramatic. Much larger Regional Housing Needs Allocation goals were assigned statewide that obligate local governments to rezone if needed to accommodate growth.
Wiener’s law, combined with economic trend data, contributed to San Francisco seeing in 2021 its housing-production goal tripled. Its target went from 28,869 for the 2015-2023 period to 82,069 homes for the 2023-31 period, plus a 15% buffer, bringing the total to 94,300 homes.
Based on the new number, The City had a projected gap of about 36,200 homes that could reasonably be expected to be built under The City’s existing regulatory framework.
The plan, which aims to promote denser residential development — largely in The City’s northern and western neighborhoods — was adopted under the threat that failure to account for the required housing units by Jan. 31 could, due to various state rules, result in San Francisco losing local development control and roughly $100 million per year in state funding.
“That used to be kind of a toothless piece of legislation, and now it has a lot more teeth,” said Ruby Bolaria Shifrin, chief investment and partnership officer at Oakland nonprofit Terner Labs for Housing Innovation, about the process that Wiener’s SB 828 law reformed.
No longer could locales disinclined to welcome more residents take measures such as citing past slow growth to influence future projections, the law said.
“We’re seeing places realize that they have to build a legitimate plan, and that the state is watching in terms of your ability to fulfill that plan,” said Shifrin, who described herself a self-described “fan of Sen. Wiener’s leadership” on housing.
“It provides political cover for San Francisco to make tough decisions,” Shifrin said. “All of those things add up to forcing local jurisdictions, like a San Francisco, to actually do something versus just letting the status quo keep going.”
Perhaps not surprisingly, since his election to the state Senate in 2016, the prolific and persistent Wiener has become a lightning rod on growth issues through a series of laws that have asserted state authority over local land-use planning matters. Critics say SB 828, for one, established high housing-production numbers that have set up local entities for failure.
Wiener’s work on housing has the potential to influence multiple elections next year, including his own.
Two appointed San Francisco supervisors who voted in favor of Lurie’s Family Zoning Plan — Stephen Sherrill in District 2 and Alan Wong in District 4 — face June elections to serve out the remainder of their terms. Matt Dorsey in District 6, another supporter, is up for reelection in November, while Rafael Mandelman is termed out in District 8.
So too is District 10 Supervisor Shamann Walton, one of four supervisors to vote against the Family Zoning Plan.
Chan said in a recent interview that Wiener has “put San Francisco in an impossible position.”
A signature issue
Laws authored by Wiener, a Harvard Law School-trained attorney, include measures requiring ministerial approval of housing projects when local jurisdictions don’t meet their housing goals, enabling state fines for cities violating housing laws, and allowing mid-rise residential buildings around major public-transit stops.
Wiener in April hailed the first draft of San Francisco’s Family Zoning Plan as “an ambitious step forward” in addressing a shortage of housing and the lack of affordability in The City, and he cited in part the effect of SB 828.
“I’m proud of our working to make housing more affordable, which has helped build thousands of below market rate homes in San Francisco,” Wiener said in a statement his office provided Wednesday.
“It makes all the sense in the world that the state would set basic standards for housing the way we set state standards for education,” Wiener said. “You have to teach math in schools and you have to allow homes near transit and jobs — standards are how we make progress on affordability while allowing many important decisions to be made at the local level.”
Wiener’s assertive legislating has made him a superhero to those who say local government has blocked housing development and reduced affordability — and a nemesis to those who say he is running roughshod over local communities and facilitating displacement of tenants and small businesses.
One charge leveled at Wiener is that he serves real-estate interests that hurt affordability.
“We just continue to see that Scott is pulling the strings to displace San Franciscans — especially working-class San Franciscans — for luxury housing,” said Christin Evans, a co-owner of a Haight-Ashbury bookstore who spoke against the Family Zoning Plan before the Board of Supervisors. “He’s always been beholden to the wealthiest real-estate development interests.”
Wiener’s spokesperson, Erik Mebust, countered that Wiener has consistently backed rent control and other tenants’ rights.
California housing laws authored by Scott Wiener
• SB 35 (2017) created a streamlined approval process for housing approvals when cities don’t meet Regional Housing Needs Assessment goals.
• SB 423 (2023) expanded the scope of the SB 35 streamlining law and extended a sunset provision to 2036.
• SB 4 (2023) allowed faith institutions such as churches, synagogues and mosques, as well as nonprofit colleges, to build certain affordable housing on their properties by right, even if local zoning prevents it.
• SB 1037 (2024), sponsored by Attorney General Rob Bonta, enabled enforcement of state housing laws with fines against offending cities going into affordable-housing funds for use in those cities.
• SB 79 (2025) will, starting in July, allow mid-rise homes within a half-mile of major transit stops, and let local transit agencies develop land they own. Buildings can be up to nine stories, with phased implementation over a period of years. Governments can come up with qualifying alternative plans, however.
Marina Safeway melee
A recent colorful point of conflict centers on a hotly contested proposal to build a 25-story, 790-unit residential complex on the site of a Safeway on Marina Boulevard along The City’s northern waterfront.
Multiple merchants take pride in going all out with decor and special menus
The senator stopped in SF to promote proposal to invest $15 billion in new housing
This week’s highlights include pop-up marketplaces, concerts, tree-lighting ceremonies and block parties
The developer’s preliminary application cites a state density-bonus law from 1979, as well as a 2022 law written by Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, who represents the East Bay, and supported by Wiener that provides for streamlined ministerial approval of projects on certain commercial lands.
Critics from varied quadrants are attacking the plan, with some laying blame at Wiener’s feet.
“The Marina Safeway luxury-tower proposal is a direct result of Senator Wiener’s [yes-in-my-backyard] deregulation agenda,” said Lori Brooke, a co-founder of a coalition of neighborhood groups called Neighborhoods United SF, in a text message. Brooke, a vocal opponent of Lurie’s Family Zoning Plan, is a candidate for District 2 supervisor in next June’s election.
In a humor-tinged post on social media, Wiener responded to the criticism. He said that it was actually the Board of Supervisors that voted to upzone the property dramatically while he was in his first year as a state senator.
Wiener said people sometimes point to him and the state as “the bogeyman, like we’re responsible for everything. And while I am extremely flattered by that attribution of power to me, and while I am proud of our state housing work, that’s not what happened here.”
He called out Aaron Peskin, a former president of the Board of Supervisors and an outspoken critic of Wiener.
Peskin “voted to do this, and now he’s complaining about it, and he’s grandstanding about it, because he’s organizing NIMBYs all over The City, but he voted for this,” Wiener said, referring to construction opponents known colloquially by the acronym standing for “not in my backyard.”
“So if you don’t like this project, you can ask Aaron Peskin why he voted to massively upzone the Marina Safeway, and if you do like the project, next time you see Aaron Peskin, tell him, ‘Thank you,’” Wiener said.
In an interview, Peskin called Wiener’s commentary “just simply ludicrous” and said it “reeks of desperation of someone who wants to cover up his culpability in this disaster.”
Peskin faulted Wiener for carrying and supporting laws that have taken away local land-use control from cities.
“If Scott Wiener wants to point the finger, the only place he should be pointing it is at himself,” he said, echoing the charge that Wiener serves real-estate interests. “He’s running from the fact that he created this entire scheme, and now it’s coming home to roost — and San Franciscans think it’s a disaster.”
Politics or protection?
Peskin called Wiener “a master of the politics of punishment,” citing Wiener’s SB 423, a 2023 bill that updated one of Wiener’s earlier laws. The measure expanded and extended until 2036 the ministerial approval for qualifying housing projects in cities not meeting their state-mandated housing targets.
The law singled out San Francisco — which the state Department of Housing and Community Development in 2023 said had the longest timelines in the state for advancing housing projects from submittal to construction — to report housing production numbers in 2024, two years earlier than The City otherwise would have.
Yet regarding the Family Zoning Plan, Annie Fryman, director of special projects at the urban-planning think tank SPUR and a former Wiener legislative staffer, said Wiener’s housing-allocation legislation essentially set standards for cities but not penalties.
Fryman said it did not establish the dreaded “builder’s remedy.” That’s 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.
“Sen. Wiener’s legislation set the bar that The City had to clear,” Fryman said.
She said Wiener’s role is sometimes “warped” by people who have “a preexisting belief about his work without being familiar with it, for better and worse.”
Fryman also emphasized that Wiener’s legislation did not dictate the form of the mayor’s Family Zoning Plan, which is designed to satisfy “a giant patchwork” of state regulations and mandates.
At the same time, Fryman said, laws like Wiener’s SB 423 make housing production more predictable and certain, which helps The City get more credit for zoned areas.
The City also faced the potential effects of SB 79 in the Family Zoning Plan proceedings. The Wiener bill, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in October, will allow mid-rise homes within a half-mile of major transit stops and let local transit agencies develop land they own starting next July.
SB 79 could allow buildings of up to nine stories — higher than in the Family Zoning Plan — with implementation phased in over a period of years.
But the law allows governments to come up with qualifying alternative plans, and San Francisco planners say that it appears the Family Zoning Plan plus existing zoning elsewhere could qualify.
District 7 Supervisor Myrna Melgar, the chair of the Land Use and Transportation Committee that held hearings on the Family Zoning Plan — which she voted for — said that she worked with Wiener on creating that flexibility.
Melgar, who has a master’s degree in urban planning from Columbia University with a concentration in housing development, said that Wiener — whom she has endorsed for Congress — is a leader, but there are also other legislators who have authored important housing legislation.
Wiener has taken “necessary” steps that, among other things, address affordability and pressing environmental issues, such as climate change, for example by increasing housing density around transit, Melgar said. Increasing density is something local jurisdictions might be reluctant to do, she said — particularly wealthy enclaves.
“They’re not going to do this willingly,” Melgar said. “San Francisco, either.”