Last month the San Francisco Planning Commission voted to advance Mayor Daniel Lurie’s upzoning plan with a 4-3 vote. This split vote shows that there are clearly concerns with the plan and reinforces what we have heard from community, housing advocates and stakeholders throughout the last year – that we must do more to protect our tenants, aging homeowners and small businesses from displacement while advancing legislation to support more housing. 

I attended the Planning Commission hearing last month and testified about my concerns. I delivered a letter to the Planning Commission laying out potential amendments to the plan that would help mitigate the impact on our communities.

I am sharing my letter below and will keep you updated with the progress we make with the Mayor’s Office on implementing these amendments.

Dear President So and Planning Commissioners:

We can all agree that we need more new housing to accommodate San Franciscans now and into our future, specifically housing that is affordable to our workers, families, artists, seniors and students. We know we can build housing while simultaneously stabilizing existing communities and protecting our small businesses. This is why the Board of Supervisors unanimously adopted a State-approved Housing Element with over 350 implementation actions developed primarily through this Planning Commission, with a focus on affordability, tenant stabilization, and equity.

The Mayor’s current proposal to upzone two-thirds of San Francisco rejects much of the Planning Commission’s own work on the Housing Element. It focuses primarily on redeveloping intact neighborhoods and rent-controlled housing, without consideration for the preservation and protection guidelines of our regional strategy. It creates a blanket upzoning plan, threatening our tenants, our aging homeowners, our small businesses and the preservation of our history. Over the past few months, I have been meeting with community stakeholders, housing advocates and Mayor Daniel Lurie and his staff to discuss ways to work together to better benefit San Franciscans, create the housing we need and do better for those who laid the foundation of this diverse city. I am hopeful given the Mayor’s commitment to furthering our discussion and look forward to working with him and his office to consider the following improvements:

• Boost Affordable Family Housing: Requiring a higher percentage of 2-bedroom and 3-bedroom units in all upzoned areas, increasing the inclusionary requirements in all new development to 20% and 25% affordability, maintaining housing units above ground floor in many neighborhood districts and setting development deadlines to ensure housing is built quickly. 

• Meaningful Tenant Protections: Prohibiting the demolition of rent-controlled units in the local program and restricting demolition of residential flats to protect existing affordable housing stock and to stabilize tenants.

• Protection of Vulnerable Populations: Removing Priority Equity Geographies areas from the proposed plan in order to stay consistent with the San Francisco General Plan’s Housing Element, approved in 2023, and protect vulnerable populations living in identified neighborhoods.

• Small Business Support: Furthering the protection of small businesses by prohibiting the demolition of Legacy Businesses and Neighborhood Anchoring Businesses, creating additional guardrails to prevent displacement for small business and mixed-use developments with ground-floor storefronts, and maintaining cohesive use on commercial and non-residential transit corridors. 

• Historic Preservation: Prohibiting the demolition and major alteration of landmarked buildings or buildings located in designated historic districts, including those identified as eligible for landmarking status, to strengthen the City’s existing iconic neighborhoods.

• Utilize SF Survey: Establishing a program with criteria to incentivize adaptive reuse of buildings identified through the Planning Commission’s historic survey in order to spur housing development while maintaining vital neighborhood characteristics and prevent tenant, small business and arts and culture displacements.

• Affordable Housing District: Building on the voter mandate of 2015’s Proposition K, establish an Affordable Housing District under the local program on public land, parcels 8,000 square feet or larger, and parcels 8,000 square feet or larger by merger and incentivize deeper height and density for majority affordable housing with no more than 15% mixed-use on site. 

• Prevailing Wage and Labor Standards: Ensuring local prevailing wage and labor standards are upheld and included for projects receiving the local program density bonus.

• Nexus Study and Infrastructure Capacity Analysis: Requiring nexus studies to analyze existing infrastructure capacity and necessary infrastructure build-out to accommodate future growth, including an in-depth analysis on the City’s technical feasibility, financial capacity and options of financing tools to expand infrastructure, such as, but not limited to, impact fees.

•California Coast and Environmental Protections: Removing the Coastal Zone from the proposed plan, instead of building housing to further burden the Coast and environment and investing in infrastructure including, but not limited to, sea walls to protect the Coast.

• Residential Transit Oriented (RTO) Zones Disincentivize Housing Development: Form-Based Density and Base Height increases, especially in RTO-Commercial districts essentially render the local density bonus (Housing Choice – SF Program) useless, with no economic incentives for housing development to build affordable housing, family housing with two or more bedrooms, community and cultural spaces serving neighborhoods or agreements to uphold labor standards.

Thank you for your consideration and I look forward to your feedback and collaboration with Mayor Lurie to implement these amendments.

Sincerely,

Connie Chan