Upzoned: Zoning Is Not Enough
Could social housing be the key to getting shovels in the ground and dirt flying on residential projects?
This is the fifth 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.
In December, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved the Family Zoning Plan on a 7–4 vote, allowing greater density in western and northern neighborhoods in an attempt to expand overall housing capacity citywide. On December 12, Mayor Daniel Lurie signed the measure into law.
But what some champion as a major policy initiative risks being dismissed as little more than a planning exercise if there are no mechanisms — or political will — to actually get shovels in the ground and build.
How, then, can the City avoid a tale full of sound and fury signifying nothing?
One element in the proverbial toolbox is the creation of a social housing developer — an entity tasked with planning, financing, building, and managing permanently affordable housing that exists under community control and isn’t beholden to the speculative real estate market.
A Seattle social housing case study by architect Neiman Taber imagines combining family-sized housing with co-living studios and townhomes on a surplus city-owned lot. | Rendering: Justin Oaksford
Better still, such an entity could be mandated to operate under a project labor agreement with the SF Building Trades Council, helping to ensure plentiful jobs and high-quality work on these badly needed residential projects.
Alex Lantsberg, research and advocacy director for the SF Electrical Construction Industry, put it bluntly: “I think everybody except the investor will benefit from a social housing developer,” he said.
Seattle offers the clearest example of that model, having created a public social housing developer to build, own, and maintain perpetually affordable mixed-income housing. San Francisco has public housing and affordable-housing agencies but lacks a distinct, Seattle-style social-housing developer.
“This isn’t pie-in-the-sky stuff,” said Shanti Singh, legislative and communications director for the tenants’ rights advocacy group Tenants Together. “These are things other cities are trying.”
Sleeping Well in Seattle
House Our Neighbors has been a leading force behind Seattle’s push for social housing over the past four years, according to Jeff Paul, the group’s co-executive director for policy and advocacy.
Paul pointed to two successful ballot initiatives as major milestones. The first, Initiative 135, passed in February 2023 and created the Seattle Social Housing Developer, a public development authority charged with acquiring and building permanently affordable, mixed-income, publicly owned social housing.
“The vision […] is to have
high-road, union-built workforce housing — by workers, for workers — and that’s a vision that’s deeply attractive to our members.”
A second initiative, approved by voters in February 2025, established a dedicated funding stream for that new developer through an “excess compensation payroll tax.” Paul said the measure was designed in response to Washington state’s legal constraints on progressive taxation.
Under the measure, companies must pay a 5% marginal tax on compensation above $1 million for any employee whose total annual pay and benefits meet or exceed that threshold. The tax brought in $115 million in its first year.
Peter Hasegawa, director of strategic campaigns and renewable energy policy for IBEW Local 46 in Washington’s King County, pushed for a partnership between House Our Neighbors with the building trades unions. He argued that a PLA would help ensure that any social housing developed under the model would be built under high-road labor standards.
“The vision […] is to have high-road, union-built workforce housing — by workers, for workers — and that’s a vision that’s deeply attractive to our members,” Hasegawa said.
The Seattle Social Housing Developer is a quasi-governmental organization that’s overseen by a 13-member board with a renter majority. One of the remaining six seats is appointed by the King County Labor Council, demonstrating the organization’s commitment to union labor.
“We feel very strongly about having this be union-built housing,” Paul said.
A core feature of the Seattle model is the inclusion of households with a range of incomes in the same building. Rents from better-off tenants can be used to support lower rents for lower-income tenants while still keeping housing affordable for all.
“Our union is a very strong advocate for social housing, and we encourage other communities to try this approach,” Hasegawa said. “What we have learned so far is that it takes skill and expertise to successfully develop housing, and so building the strongest and most experienced team within the Social Housing Developer is really a key step to getting good outcomes.”
Where There Isn’t a Will…
… there isn’t a way. So far, that’s been the case in San Francisco. In speaking with advocates, one theme kept surfacing: The biggest obstacle to social housing is a lack of political resolve.
“We need money, but I think that more than money, we need institutional will,” Lantsberg said, describing San Franciscans for Social Housing as one of the groups pushing the cause.
Though the idea of social housing often draws a positive response, Singh said, it still lacks the momentum needed from elected leaders to move it forward.
“It’s an idea that people like,” Singh said. “But […] we need the political will to make it happen.”
Rudy Gonzalez, secretary–treasurer of the SF Building and Construction Trades Council, argued that social housing would not be a return to the failed public housing models of the past. Instead, he said, it should serve not only low-income residents but also public-sector employees and middle-class workers.
“We’ve got to have places for teachers and firefighters and nurses — and building trades members — to live in this city,” Gonzalez said. “That’s not just my philosophical position. That’s good economics.”
He said that he doesn’t see social housing as the only answer to the housing crisis, but rather as one part of an all-of-the-above approach.
“I think the evolution is going to be: What role can the government play in actually serving as the owner–developer?” Gonzalez said.
“I think social housing is real. I think it’s an opportunity,” he said. “I hope people have the bandwidth and the attention span to dive into it.”