By Thomas K. Pendergast

Decades-old zoning laws on the west side of San Francisco are being challenged by California state housing mandates, so city planners are turning their attention to rezoning in the Richmond and Sunset districts. 

The state is requiring San Francisco to add 82,000 units to its housing stock by 2031, in a city that typically builds about 2,000 new housing units each year. 

Failure to do so could result in the City losing state funding to support both transportation and housing, more fines and lawsuits, and, in a worst-case scenario, the potential loss of housing control by local authorities.

At an open house meeting at the San Francisco County Fair Building hosted by the SF Planning Department on July 11, two zoning concepts now being considered were presented to the public. 

One would concentrate on major streets like Geary Boulevard, Fulton, Clement and California streets in the Richmond District, plus 19th Avenue, Sunset and Sloat boulevards, Judah, Noriega and Taraval streets in the Sunset District. 

Zoning would be changed on these major traffic and commercial corridors to allow for six- or eight-story buildings at 65-to-85 feet tall instead of the four-story or 40-foot height limits now in place. 

The alternative plan would keep those same zoning changes for Geary Boulevard and 19th Avenue but limiting the other aforementioned roadways to six-stories or 65 feet high. However, it would also expand out into adjacent residential streets by changing the density limitations and allowing for either fourplexes or sixplexes on corner lots throughout both districts.

During her presentation at the open house, Lisa Chen, the department’s project manager for expanding housing choice, explained that the trend toward current building height limits culminated in 1978, when many neighborhoods were downzoned to allow only single-family homes and lower-density buildings. 

Since 2005, Chen explained, only 10% of all new housing has been built on the west side, North Beach and Marina areas, while the bulk of new housing has been constructed in the eastern half of the City. 

Chen also said in San Francisco median home prices have doubled over the past 10 years and tripled over the last 20 years.

Concerning rent prices, she said rents are rising faster than people’s incomes. As an example, she noted that in the Outer Sunset, 40% of renters pay more than a third of their income for rent. 

“They could be one emergency away from being housing insecure due to a health crisis, losing a job, needing to take care of a family member or other reasons,” Chen said.

The department’s acting director of citywide planning, Joshua Switzky, said that because most construction has been on the east side, the western half of the City has seen relatively little new housing. 

“And so, the focus here is on those neighborhoods, particularly the western and northern halves of the City where the City hasn’t grown a lot in recent years,” Switzky said. “We’re doing our best to maintain the culture of what people love about their neighborhoods and the kind of institutions and businesses that really make neighborhoods special, also the kind of physical qualities that people like about their neighborhoods.”

He summed up the difference between the two concepts. 

“The nuanced tradeoffs are between slightly higher buildings on the corridors and one with slightly lower ones but with additional allowance for more density off the corridors,” he said. “Organically, incrementally, over time people would have the opportunity to add more units to their properties.”

District 7 resident Lori Liederman, however, does not seem very impressed by nuanced tradeoffs, calling the option focusing on constructing higher buildings along main corridors a “recipe for displacement.” 

“That kind of construction is absolutely going to require demolition not only of a single house at a time but of a significant number of structures and what that means is displacement. You can’t demolish without displacement,” Liederman said. “Because they’re targeting Geary Boulevard, Divisadero, these are boulevards full of neighborhood, commercial serving businesses that are serving the neighborhoods and those businesses are going to go out if their buildings get sold. 

“The people who work in those businesses will lose jobs; the people who own those businesses will lose their livelihoods,” she said. “The impacts are going to be enormous, and a lot of those properties also have rent-controlled houses or rent-controlled units above commercial.”

Liederman used what happened in the Mission District and SOMA as an example of what might befall the west side.

“We already saw what happened in the Mission and what happened in SOMA when they changed the zoning, and they built all these big buildings and thousands of people got displaced. And now they’re looking at other working-class areas to do the same kind of damage,” she said.

“I saw that Fulton was targeted. I think that’s just chock full of rent-controlled buildings, as well as some pretty fancy homes in the early-numbered blocks, but that’s a tremendous impact on hundreds, if not thousands, of tenants on the line.”

George Wooding of the Coalition for San Francisco Neighborhoods, however, favors limiting the zoning changes to the big streets and Neighborhood Commercial Districts (NCD).

“Those narrow areas can be built five or six stories up, as opposed to spreading out three blocks in either direction and bringing up a whole big section,” Wooding said. “The commercial corridors are designed to have stores, retail and residential. They can be mixed use and under that situation I have no problem with that.

“Spreading out three blocks past the NCD corridors, I have a huge problem with.” 

While Richmond resident Bobak Esfandiari favors rezoning in general, he leans more in favor of spreading things out with higher density limits in the residential areas. 

“I’m more of a fan of the other concept; the one that has slightly lower height limits but spreads everything out with a little more density decontrolled in the avenues and Cabrillo and these other side streets,” Esfandiari said. “I definitely think that if you put all the pressure on a street like Geary, you’re obviously going to have more turnover and more focus on rebuilding those areas more quickly, which might in turn lead to businesses having to leave sooner than we want them to and not having a suitable replacement venue or space to rent.

“Whereas if we flatten a little more out and spread it out a little more, yeah everyone has to deal with a little bit of change but it’s not as aggressive, right?”

Esfandiari mentioned the massive tower proposed for the Sloat Garden Center site to illustrate his point.

“I think the better way to think about it is to use that tower that’s being proposed in the Sunset (2700 Sloat Blvd.) as an analogy,” he explained. “We could either do five or six of those and drive everyone insane or we could do 20 eight-story ones and it’s equivalently the same, but it spreads it out a little bit more, it’s a little less frustration for people who live nearby when they undergo that construction period.”

Yet the department’s Director Richard Hillis leans toward the plan for taller buildings along the main traffic corridors. 

“People will want to live on Geary; similar to the zoning we have on other commercial corridors, on Valencia, on Market,” Hillis said. “That’s where there are opportunities. There tends to be less displacement of existing residents. We tend not to be (demolishing) existing homes on commercial corridors. 

“The lots tend to be bigger. We can get more housing. It’s adjacent to transit, generally. It supports traditional retail. There are a myriad of reasons why it works better.”