By Thomas K. Pendergast

Changes proposed for new housing throughout the City could have a big impact on the west side if SF Mayor London Breed’s plan for “streamlining” the process to replace single-family homes with multi-unit buildings is approved. 

The Constraints Reduction Ordinance, a.k.a. the Housing Production Ordinance, would amend San Francisco planning codes and zoning maps while eliminating some of the processes now in place. 

On June 29, the Planning Commission passed the ordinance, with a few amendments, by a 3-2 vote and it is now headed to the Board of Supervisors.

“The fact is, so many people have had the ability to live in this city for many generations and is oftentimes the only reason why they can still afford to live here,” Breed said at a rally before the vote. “What happens to the folks who are working hard, two and three jobs and still can’t afford the rent, or can’t afford to put a down payment on a home to stay in the place that they were born and raised in? We have to get out of our own way. 

“The layers of bureaucracy that have been created have really been a burden for the problem of building housing,” she said.

District 4 Supervisor Joel Engardio has already announced his support for the proposed ordinance. 

“We don’t have enough housing for our teachers, first responders and the next generation of families,” Engardio said. “Why not? Because we haven’t built enough housing to match decades of demand and that results in something sad. What happens when people want to get married or have a kid? Too often they move out of San Francisco.

“We need to build more six-story apartments, five stories of housing above a café, grocery, senior center, child care – everything that all residents in a neighborhood will benefit from.”

The Planning Department’s Aaron Starr told the commission that the proposed ordinance is the next step in a “Housing Element” plan which outlines how the City is going to meet a California state-mandated goal of building more than 82,000 units in San Francisco by 2031, with the threat of state funding to support housing and transportation being withheld if the City does not meet the goal. 

Starr said the City typically builds about 2,000 new units per year, yet the new mandate will require construction of about 10,000 units per year in a city with the longest approval time for new housing in the state. 

Among many other changes, the ordinance would remove neighborhood notice for expansions and new construction, except for within newly created priority equity geographies, which will be mostly downtown, SOMA, the Western Addition to Japantown and areas west of Mission Street in the Outer Mission neighborhood, as well as District 7 and along the southern edge of the City. These areas will not, however, be part of most of the City’s west side, including the Richmond and Sunset districts. 

It also permits “double density senior housing” in all zoning districts without requiring a Conditional Use Authorization; removes Planning Commission hearing requirements for State Density Bonus projects; amends Planning Code section 317 to allow more demolitions outside of the Priority Equities Geographies – except if they are tenant occupied or have a history of no-fault evictions within five years; have more than two units under rent control; are designated historic buildings and require at least one additional unit to be added; and they must still comply with replacement, relocation and first right of refusal provisions. 

It would allow 100% affordable housing projects with up to 120% of Area Median Income (AMI) to receive a fee waiver, including qualifying state density bonus projects. 

“Currently only housing projects with up to 80% AMI and funded by specific agencies are eligible for the fee waiver,” Starr said.

As calculated by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, in San Francisco, 100% AMI are annual incomes of $97,000 for a single person, $110,850 for two people, $124,700 for three and $138,550 for four. 

The ordinance would also allow one dwelling unit to be demolished for Home-SF projects. 

“This is intended to allow buildings with commercial use on the ground floor and one unit above or single-family homes in our NC (neighborhood commercial) districts to be eligible for this program,” Starr said. 

It would also remove California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) impacts as eligibility requirements for HOME-SF projects.

“I’d just like to stress that this is not exempting these projects from CEQA – that would still apply – but whether the project has a CEQA impact would not be used to determine eligibility for the program,” he said. 

Among many points of contention, however, critics point out what is not included in the ordinance. 

“This legislation fails to provide any plan for affordable housing,” said Jeantelle Labertino of the Race and Equity in all Planning Coalition. 

She noted that 46,000 of the 82,000 new units demanded by the state to be built by 2031 are also required to be “affordable.”

“The mayor’s legislation, as well as the mayor’s budget, does not provide any new resources or strategies for permanent, truly affordable housing despite the mandate requiring that of the 82,000 units we need to build by 2031, 57% of those units should be affordable to those with extremely low, low and moderate income,” Labertino said. 

“Rather than building for San Franciscans needs, the mayor is focusing on developer giveaways that will set San Francisco on a track to repeat the same failures of the previous Housing Element. During those years, San Francisco overbuilt market-rate units by almost double and underbuilt for low-income residents by almost half.”

“Mayor Breed and the Planning Department are pushing streamlining of even more luxury condos at a time when the City has an astoundingly high residential vacancy rate, 15%, and a declining population,” she said. 

One of the two commissioners who voted against the ordinance, Katherine Moore, also noticed the lack of an affordable housing element in the plan.

“I am unfortunately disappointed today that a major aspect of what we tried to really support in the Housing Element is indeed the creation of affordable housing for lower-income people. And I believe that this particular piece of legislation in front of us today does not fully address that particular aspect,” Moore said.

She also said there are perhaps at least 60,000 housing units either sitting vacant or “in the pipeline” of construction or on the market but not yet sold. 

“How many vacant units do we really have? And it’s not (just) vacant units of newer buildings. It is vacant units which have been standing around vacant for more than 20 or 30 years.”

“And I live in a neighborhood, predominantly a five-, six-story (buildings) neighborhood where across the street, left and right, in a 360-degree circle, they are all vacant,” Moore said.

“In 1978, there were 32,000 (vacant units) based on census data provided at that time. I think the guess today is about 60,000 or more. That is on top of units that are freshly built and have not sold,” she said.

“We have significant amounts of large approved projects, probably in the hundred-thousand or more units. People who have been around long enough know that these projects have not kick-started and there is always a reason and it’s the economy,” Moore said.

“But that is the reality and I personally do not believe that the extreme measures that have been proposed in this legislation will help us to overcome what has always been the issue, that was a hindrance of realizing housing. You all know what that is, it’s called money.”