Upzoned: Uphill Battle
SF’s Family Zoning Plan draws lawsuits and skepticism, but no housing yet. Here’s why.
This is the fourth article in an ongoing series exploring San Francisco’s Family Zoning Plan, which the City claims will expand housing affordability and availability by allowing for increased density along transit and commercial corridors. View all stories in the series here.
First, you pass the legislation. Then come the lawyers.
In December, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed on a 7–4 vote the Family Zoning Plan (FZP), which increases density in the City’s western and northern neighborhoods, with the ultimate goal of increasing housing capacity overall. On December 12, Mayor Daniel Lurie signed the bill into law.
YIMBY groups are now suing, arguing the plan doesn’t go far enough. Not to be left out, NIMBY groups have also sued, citing environmental review.
Rudy Gonzalez, secretary–treasurer of the San Francisco Building and Construction Trades Council, has little patience for such games.
“It was disappointing, in my opinion,” he said of the legal action. “I don’t know what they’re expecting to do.”
Some of the loudest voices on either side, Gonzalez said, “feel very absolutist in their positions and ideologies.” Meanwhile, his primary position is that housing ought to get built.
“Certainly, there were things that we would have loved to have done around the [FZP], but the building trades understood that not all the things we cared about would politically or lawfully fit in the constraints of the four corners of that document,” he said.
“They are going to be things that will actually translate into dirt flying on some of these megaprojects.”
Alex Lantsberg, research and advocacy director for the San Francisco Electrical Construction Industry, is watching the legal maneuvering with a measured mix of skepticism and amusement.
“It should be interesting to watch,” he said, adding that changing the maps is speculative.
Shanti Singh, legislative and communications director for the statewide coalition of local tenant organizations Tenants Together, used an old joke when discussing the FZP: It’s like a camel, she said — a horse designed by committee.
From a tenant protection standpoint, the plan puts dozens of smaller units at risk, Singh said. She characterized the lawsuits as “sabre rattling” and said she didn’t know whether activists have the stomach to re-engage at this point.
“I wonder if the [FZP] was such an exhausting exercise that no one wants to pry it back open,” she said.
Singh agrees with critics who say the zoning overhaul does little to address why developers aren’t building in the first place.
“I think it all kind of points back to the fact that we don’t have a mayor committed to social housing, because you need public investment to get building started,” she said, “and we don’t have a mayor or board of supervisors who’s really thinking seriously about public investment. That’s, I think, the key to everything.”
The passage of the FZP was necessary, as the state mandated the City develop a plan to increase housing by the end of January or face consequences. Passing the plan avoided the threat.
“There will be other conversations about zoning,” Gonzalez said.
The SF Building Trades leader estimates that there are roughly 70,000 homes in San Francisco’s development pipeline that are entitled, approved, and compliant with zoning — but not getting built.
“How do we unlock those?” Gonzalez asked. “We should go back and look at some of the major projects that make up that 70,000 number and figure out what else we can do.”
The problem, Lantsberg said, isn’t zoning capacity alone. It’s capital.
New construction must deliver returns that compete with other investments. Right now, housing often doesn’t. Lantsberg cited sectors like data centers that are more profitable. With high interest rates, construction costs, and risk, developers are looking for “gangbuster returns,” he said.
Gonzalez called the YIMBY and NIMBY lawsuits “super-obnoxious” and said they amount to “digging up old bones.”
“I don’t have the patience or luxury to sit there and relitigate the [FZP],” he said.
For the moment, Gonzalez is “doing a lot of listening” to better understand the issues facing development, and he’s remaining engaged with the mayor’s office. He said the trades are developing a concrete policy agenda they can bring directly to policymakers.
“They’re not going to be a hope and a prayer,” he said of the agenda items. “They’re going to be things that will actually translate into dirt flying on some of these megaprojects.”
But until policymakers address the underlying funding issues, Gonzalez believes zoning battles alone won’t translate into cranes in the sky.
“We just had to get a compliant plan to the state,” he said. “Let’s move on, and let’s figure out how else we can unlock housing — and that really comes down to not YIMBY versus NIMBY, but that comes down to funding.”