Editor:
Mayor Daniel Lurie, San Francisco’s housing cup is already full. Your so-called Family Zoning Plan threatens to pour even more into neighborhoods like the Sunset and Richmond long-established communities that are already dense, built wall-to-wall with row houses, and constrained not only by limited parking, and small lots, but also by inadequate water infrastructure for emergency firefighting.
As recent reporting demonstrates, large parts of the west side remain unprotected by high-pressure firefighting systems, leaving entire neighborhoods vulnerable. The proposed rezoning map makes it feel like our homes could be bulldozed overnight to meet quotas other cities could handle.
San Francisco is already one of the densest cities in the country, yet Sacramento expects us to absorb 82,000 new housing units while smaller towns across the Bay Area, with far more open land, get away with far smaller quotas. Build more in Sacramento suburbs! I actually know someone who would welcome more neighbors. Even Berkeley, where much of the state’s “yes-in-my-backyard” rhetoric was born, is under lighter mandates. How is this equitable, scientific or even geometrically possible?
Much of the Sunset is already compact, with row houses shoulder-to-shoulder that would look like urban blocks in most towns. You can’t simply stack more stories on soft sand and limited parking and call it progress. We already live densely. The question isn’t whether we can handle density, it’s whether forcing more units here is physically, financially and socially feasible.
If proof were needed, look no further than the Potrero Yard Modernization Project. It was supposed to deliver over 500 affordable units atop a Muni bus yard in the Mission, the largest affordable housing project in decades. But then the City announced it would be slashed to only 100 units (an 80% reduction) because the engineering and construction costs made the original plan impossible. Earthquake-safe foundations, high labor costs and expensive materials all combined to make even “affordable” housing financially unworkable. As my husband put it, “Whoever solves those problems might as well win a Nobel Prize.”
San Francisco doesn’t lack goodwill or imagination; we lack physical space, stable funding, and honest math. The state’s housing quotas, when applied indiscriminately, set us up for failure.
Mayor Lurie, if you truly care about families, the Sunset, and every neighborhood in San Francisco, it’s time to call on other cities to share the burden. Don’t treat our City as a dumping ground for mandates that are impossible to meet. San Francisco deserves a housing plan grounded in fairness, science and respect for the communities that already exist not a political experiment that overfills our already full cup.
Wendy Liu
Categories: letter to the editor
Richmond Review/Sunset Beacon 
Great letter, don’t expect Billionaires to listen. They can’t gentrify fast enough.
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update from Paris:
everything you have heard about it is not true. Engardio has either never been here or he is lying about Paris traffic and how he wants to turn sf into Paris.
Motor vehicles rule on the major streets. Pedestrians rule on the small narrow allies.
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The density of a major metropolitan city should not be compared to “towns”. The sunset has compact single family houses, yes, but single family houses are not dense housing! The western half of SF is basically a suburb- That is not denisty.
SF is a city, not a town. It’s time it grows like one
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Someone said: “SF is a city, not a town. It’s time it grows like one.” OK… how?
Let’s be clear: SF is all grown up in terms of development. She’s DONE. There’s no room left. If San Francisco were a person, she’d be moderately obese and barely fitting into the clothes she already owns. I never said she was a town, that’s what you said.
Look, every one of these single-family homes is occupied by real people, real families. Our homes stand shoulder-to-shoulder, sharing walls, like books on a library shelf. And let’s drop the lie that the western side of San Francisco is a “suburb.” Real suburbs have huge detached homes on big lots think San Carlos, Half Moon Bay, Menlo Park. Out here, we’re already dense. Forget about adding new housing to the west side there’s simply no room without kicking people out.
I wasn’t comparing San Francisco to a town; I was comparing land use. Much of the Sunset is built wall-to-wall, with density that would look urban anywhere else. Imagine taking a typical Sunset block and plopping it in a suburb like Atherton. The contrast would be stark, it would look crowded, out of place, and decidedly not suburban. That’s the point: the Sunset is hardly a suburb, and we’re already living densely.
The Sunset is already a city. Cities can have residential areas and still be part of the city SF has the Sunset, NYC has Staten Island, Seattle has West Seattle.
So if “growing like a city” means leveling stable, already-compact neighborhoods while larger, lower-density areas build nothing, that’s not smart growth. What you’re advocating isn’t growth at all it’s displacement. Cruelty dressed up as policy.
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Notice they never want to knock down the 3 story mansions on Billionaire’s Row to put up their vaunted yuppie condo towers. It’s only the families of working class people in the West that they demand be removed and replaced.
Class warfare at work under a YIMBY banner, all day every day.
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San Francisco is an already-developed SMALL PENINSULA. FTFY.
No amount of YIMBY BS changes reality no matter how much they shovel. Removing local input and jacking up the prices for ever smaller spaces is a race to the bottom, not housing equity for the lower income classes. It’s a lie.
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Paris, NYC, London all have functioning underground transit to get across their cities. We do not.
Expand the underground to connect the city the way these places are and then we can talk.
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I am a third generation San Franciscan. Unlike my parents and grandparents, who were owned property in the City, I have been priced out of the market and should I choose to stay in S.F., I will live in a small apartment for the rest of my life. My child will never be able to own property here, either. The only way that my generation (I am in my 40’s) can own property is to inherit it.
Why is that? Because, for decades, property owners have resisted development by voting against it or by suing to block it. There is not enough housing supply to meet the demand, and so the value of property in San Francisco is grossly inflated. I find it offensive that a 100-year-old 3-bedroom house is a couple million dollars. That is great if you bought the house 40 years ago for $200K (you are sitting on a gold mine), but if you are a parent who wants to raise their family in S.F., you are priced out.
It makes me livid. There is an easy solution to this problem – build more housing. Where? Well, some of the plans that I have seen propose building residential units on top of existing commercial property, for example on Geary and other “commercial corridors.” Would this change the character of the neighborhood? Yes, it would. But it would also allow people like me (and my family) to own property and put down roots.
I am not aware of anyone proposing that we tear down single-family homes and replace them with apartment buildings or condos. I think that is a scare tactic from the NIMBY crowd.
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Hi Scott, I hear your frustration, and it’s true that housing in SF is extremely expensive and your kids may face real challenges living here. That said, blaming current homeowners isn’t constructive. They didn’t create the underlying economic pressures, and it’s not their fault.
https://richmondsunsetnews.com/2025/08/20/real-estate-john-lee-9/
https://richmondsunsetnews.com/2025/09/24/letter-to-the-editor-mayor-lurie-needs-to-address-westside-fire-prevention/
Building responsibly isn’t about tearing down homes or ignoring neighborhood character, it’s about balancing growth, cost, safety, and infrastructure, while spreading the responsibility fairly across the region.
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