San Francisco Board of Supervisors greenlights mayor’s housing plan

SAN FRANCISCO (CN) — The San Francisco Board of Supervisors Tuesday approved Mayor Daniel Lurie’s controversial “Family Zoning” housing plan, which will allow taller, denser housing developments to be built across the city’s north and west sides.

The plan will create tens of thousands of new houses and help the city comply with a state requirement to develop an additional 36,000 housing units by 2031. The city had until Jan. 31, 2026, to adopt a new zoning plan or risk losing millions in state funding and the ability to locally control zoning rules.

The board approved the plan 7-4.

“Across our city, families are struggling to pay rent or hoping for an opportunity to buy a home where they can raise their kids,” Lurie said in a statement.

“As elected leaders, we must do everything we can to help them, and the Board of Supervisors has taken an important step to do that today. Our Family Zoning plan will allow us to build more homes so that kids growing up here will one day be able to raise their own families in San Francisco," he continued.

Supervisors Myrna Melgar, Matt Dorsey, Danny Sauter, Stephen Sherrill, Bilal Mahmood and Rafael Mandelman voted to support the plan. Alan Wong, newly appointed supervisor for the Sunset District, also voted in favor.

Supervisors Connie Chan, Shamann Walton, Chyanne Chen and Jackie Fielder opposed the plan.

Melgar, who chairs the Land Use and Transportation Committee, said the rezoning plan helps build a “more equitable and ethical tomorrow.”

“This plan is not perfect,” she said. “It will not solve our housing crisis or our affordability crisis, but it’s an absolutely necessary step.”

Proponents of the plan emphasized the looming state deadline to adopt a new zoning plan and the potential consequences of not approving the current plan.

“Voting against this plan would bring a loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in state funds. It would block thousands of future affordable homes. And, it would set us down a path to a flurry of ‘builder’s remedy’ projects,” Sauter said. “Think high-rise towers in any part of the city with no local involvement in these decisions. That’s not an exaggeration. That is the reality of what you risk by voting against the Family Zoning Plan.”

In contrast, Walton called the rezoning plan “a response to state bullying,” and said the city should be fighting the state, because it was the right thing to do. Fielder said she was “well aware of the reality of what’s at stake,” but that any program the board creates should be responsive to local communities and avoid any unintended consequences, such as displacement.

The supervisors hotly debated whether the plan would demolish rent-controlled housing and displace residents. Chan and Fielder repeated claims that the current plan had no protections against demolitions for around 20,000 rent-controlled units.

Chan, who announced in November she would run for House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi’s congressional seat, went further by making a last-ditch attempt to introduce an amendment to the plan to protect those units, though it failed by a 7-4 vote.

“I am who I am today, as a member of the board, raising my children in the Richmond, because of the stable rent-controlled housing I had growing up,” she said.

Sauter slammed Chan’s amendment, calling it “more political, rather than serious in nature,” while Mahmood criticized her for repeating the claim that 20,000 homes would be demolished, calling it “fearmongering.”

“It’s exploiting genuine concerns of residents across the city to score political points, that’s not leadership, it’s emotional exploitation, and our residents deserve better,” Mahmood said.

Lisa Chen, principal planner for the city’s planning department, said that the 20,000 demolitions claim wasn’t accurate, adding that the city’s strong tenant protections have been a successful deterrent to demolitions.

All the supervisors spoke in favor of protecting rent-controlled units, but sparred over whether the rezoning plan would help or harm the affordability crisis.

Sauter said a vote against the rezoning plan was a vote for the status quo, adding, “It is a privilege to be ok with the status quo.”

“Landlords and billionaires make their money off the status quo while families, renters, and working-class communities lose out,” he said.

On the opposite side, Walton said the plan was “good for theory and for rhetoric,” but didn’t go far enough to support vulnerable populations.

“The plan will not protect all rent control housing from demolition, which I have to remind you, is critical for affordability in the city,” he said.

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