Lurie wants more density in an area that has fallen behind in a key public safety area
To the editor:
This is testimony I submitted to the Land Use and Transportation Committee on Mayor Daniel Lurie’s new zoning plan:
I am here to tell you about a serious public safety concern that I and my neighbors have that needs your immediate attention.
I am talking about the fact that the city’s high pressure Emergency Firefighting Water System does not extend much into the city’s westside and southern neighborhoods. Without this vital life-saving infrastructure in place, the westside, in particular, with its hundreds of blocks of wood-frame buildings, will likely succumb to firestorms of unimaginable proportions immediately following the next great earthquake.
Fire hydrants with white caps are not ‘hardened’ for an emergency. Investigating further we find:
The color codes are complicated and that goes to show just how complicated the entire fire protection system is. Different colors indicate different water source sand different water pressure, and in some cases, using the hydrant requires a special truck attached to be effective. What we do no is that the West Side Auxiliary system was never completed.
My particular neighborhood is at great risk due to the lack of this vital infrastructure. I am reminded practically every day of the fact of the absence of the city’s fire protection infrastructure. Right outside my living room window is a fire hydrant with a white cap. This piece of infrastructure will be useless in suppressing the conflagration expected after gas mains burst and the westside neighborhoods are a blaze as that type of fire hydrant isn’t “hardened.”… (more)
Houses in San Francisco’s Sunset District on July 12, 2023. Photo by Semantha Norris, CalMatters
This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.
Imagine you’ve finally taken your car to the mechanic to investigate that mysterious warning light that’s been flashing on your dashboard for the past week and a half.
The mechanic informs you that your car’s brake fluid is too low. Dangerously low. Your brake fluid supply, he says, has reached “crisis” levels, which sounds both scary and very expensive.
Naturally, you would prefer that your car have a non-critical amount of brake fluid. “How much more do I need?” you ask.
“A quart,” the mechanic responds. “No, actually, three quarts. Or maybe seven gallons — but only routed to your rear brakes. Actually, let’s settle on half an ounce.”
Such is the situation with California’s housing shortage.
For nearly a decade now, the Legislature has been churning out bills, Attorney General Rob Bonta has been filing lawsuits and Gov. Gavin Newsom has been revamping agencies, dashing off executive orders and quoting Ezra Klein with the explicit goal of easing the state’s chronic undersupply of places to live.
California simply doesn’t have enough housing and this shortage is the leading cause of our housing affordability concerns — virtually everyone in and around the state government, along with the vast majority of academics who have studied the issue, seems now to agree on this point.
This consensus was on display this year when lawmakers passed two sweeping changes to state housing law, one that shields apartment developments from environmental litigation and the other that would permit denser development near major public transit stops in big cities. Both were legislative non-starters just a few years ago. These days even the opponents of these bills have accepted the premise that the state faces a “housing shortage,” a term evoked at least 30 times in committee hearings and floor speeches this year.
Now, if only anyone could agree on how big the housing shortage actually is.
Plenty of people have tried to put a number on the problem.
In 2015, the Legislative Analyst’s Office, which serves as a policy analysis shop and think tank for the Legislature, took an early crack at quantifying the state’s shortage by calculating how many additional units major metro areas would have had to build over the prior three decades to keep housing cost inflation on par with that of the rest of the country.
It came up with 2.7 million missing units.
A year later, consulting giant McKinsey one-upped the LAO, putting the state’s “housing shortfall” at 3.5 million houses, apartments and condos, a number Newsom campaigned on.
Not all estimates hit seven digits. In 2024, the housing policy nonprofit Up For Growth published the more modest estimated shortfall of 840,000 units, which comes pretty close to the 820,000 Freddie Mac put forward a few years earlier.
California Housing Partnership, a nonprofit that advocates for affordable housing, has counted the deficit at 1.3 million units — but not just any units. That’s how many homes the state needs to add that are affordable to people making under a certain income.
Then, this summer, a group of housing analysts including an economist at Moody’s Analytics, came up with the strikingly low figure of just 56,000 — though the authors acknowledged that it’s probably an underestimate.
Estimates of the nation’s overall housing supply are similarly all over the place: From as high as 8.2 million to 1.5 million (and, in one controversial paper, zero).
What even is a housing shortage?
The concept of a “housing shortage” is, in theory, pretty simple, said Anjali Kolachalam, an analyst at Up For Growth.
“It’s basically just the gap between the housing you have and the housing you need,” she said.
In practice, defining and then setting out to quantify the “housing you need” is an exercise fraught with messy data, guestimation and an inconvenient need for judgement calls.
Most estimates begin with a target vacancy rate. In any reasonably well-functioning housing market, the logic goes, some houses and apartments sit empty, either because they’re between renters, they’ve just been built or sold, they’re being fixed or renovated or they’re someone’s second home. A modest vacancy rate is what allows you to pull up Zillow or Craigslist and not get a “No Results Found” error. A very low one suggests there aren’t enough homes to go around.
But choosing a “healthy” vacancy rate — one that reflects a functional housing market — and then backing out the number of additional homes needed to hit it, is more art than science. Most estimates turn to historical data to find some level when supply and demand weren’t completely out of whack. Whether that halcyon period of relative affordability is 2015 or 2006 or 2000 or 1980 varies by researcher and, likely, by the region being considered.
“This notion of ‘pent up demand’ is necessarily in an economist’s judgment call.”
Elena Patel, fellow, Brookings Institution
Beyond that, many researchers have tried to put a value on what is sometimes called “pent up” demand or “missing households.” Those are all the people who would have gone off and gotten their own apartment or bought their own place, but, because of the unavailability of affordable places to live, have opted to keep living with housemates, with parents or, in more extreme cases, without shelter of any kind.
Absent a survey of every living person, there’s no way to precisely measure how many people fall into this camp.
“This notion of ‘pent up demand’ is necessarily in an economist’s judgment call,” said Elena Patel, a fellow at the Brookings Institution who helped put together a nationwide shortage estimate last year (4.9 million).
These variations in methods help explain some of the differences in the shortage estimates. Other differences pop-up thanks to the vagaries of data.
The Moody’s Analytics-led report, for example, calculated a national shortage of roughly 2 million units by adding together both the number of new units needed to raise the overall vacancy rate and the homes needed to backfill their measure of “pent up” demand. But for its California-specific estimate, the data wasn’t available to do the latter, potentially leaving out a big chunk of the statewide shortage.
Then some estimates differ because the analysts are defining the shortage in a completely different way.
The California Housing Partnership looks at the difference between the number of households deemed by federal housing guidelines to have “very” or “extremely” low incomes and the number of units that those households could conceivably rent with less than 30% of their incomes.
That gap of 1.3 million gets at a problem totally distinct from an overall shortage of homes.
Finally, there’s the question of scale. Housing markets are, on the whole, local. A national shortage is going to add together San Francisco and Detroit, masking the extremes of both. A shortage estimate for a state as large and diverse as California may have the same problem.
“It is like looking for a weather forecast for a trip to the beach and being told that the average temperature nationwide is likely to be 67 degrees,” the authors of the Moody’s-led analysis wrote.
Why estimate a shortage?
What might be more valuable than fixating on any one shortage estimate, said Daniel McCue, a researcher at the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, is to look at all the estimates together and appreciate that, by and large, they’re all huge.
“Whether it’s one-and-a-half million or five-and-a-half million, these are big numbers,” he said. That leads to an inescapable takeaway, he said. “There’s so much to do. There’s so far to go.”
Patel, from Brookings, said trying to put a precise tally on what is ultimately the somewhat nebulous concept of a “housing shortage” is still a worthwhile exercise because it gives lawmakers and planners a benchmark against which to measure progress.
How much additional taxpayer money should a state throw at affordable housing development? How aggressive should a locality be in pursuing changes to local zoning? “The more concrete you can be in policy making land, the better,” she said.
The State of California does in fact have its own set of concrete numbers.
Every eight years, the Department of Housing and Community Development issues planning goals to regions across the state — a number of additional homes, broken down by affordability level, that every municipality should plan for. These are, effectively, California government’s official estimates of the state shortage.
To cobble together these numbers, state regulators look at projections of population growth to accommodate the need for future homes and then tack on adjustments to account for all the homes that weren’t built in prior periods, but perhaps ought to have been. If a region has an excess number of households deemed overcrowded, it gets more units. If vacancy rates are below a predetermined level, it gets more units. If there is a bevy of people spending more than 30% of their incomes on rent, more (affordable) units.
It’s a process that the state regulators have come to take somewhat more seriously in recent years, engendering an ongoing political backlash from density-averse local governments and neighborhood activists.
In the state’s last estimate, the topline total was 2.5 million units.
This coming cycle, which has already begun in the rural north and will slowly roll out across the state in the coming years, will produce yet another number. That will be one more estimate for state lawmakers of how much brake fluid the car needs.
A decade ago, Shola Olatoye was asked by New York City’s mayor to help turn around the city’s beleaguered public housing system. Now, the former affordable housing executive has been pulled into another high-stakes mission: steering millions of dollars in private investment toward projects aimed at bringing San Francisco’s downtown back to life.
The East Coast native has been tapped to serve as the CEO of the San Francisco Downtown Development Corporation, a new privately funded nonprofit tasked with raising the necessary capital to help boost Mayor Daniel Lurie’s vision for revitalizing the city’s faltering downtown core.
Olatoye, who served as the CEO of New York City’s Housing Authority prior to the pandemic before becoming chief operating officer of East Bay affordable housing developer Eden Housing, will start her term at DDC on Oct. 1.
Though quietly formed earlier this year, the organization was given a spotlight last week when Lurie announced that it had raised $40 million from unidentified sources. The announcement left many wondering about the forces shaping downtown’s next chapter — and any potential conflicts. Olatoye promised transparency moving forward: As a private nonprofit, DDC is beholden to bylaws and annual reporting requirements, she said, adding that its backers will be made public in the coming months…(more)
Makes sense if you want to turn SF into NYC to hire someone who already did it.
Neighborhoods United San Francisco – westsideobserver – excerpt
Not Compliant with the City’s State-Approved Housing Element or General Plan
This week, Neighborhoods United SF (NUSF) has put the City of San Francisco on notice that Mayor Daniel Lurie’s “Family Zoning Plan” is not compliant with the City’s own 2022 Housing Element or its General Plan.
In its letter to Planning Commission President Lydia So, attorney Richard Drury, of Lozeau Drury, LLP, on behalf of NUSF states:
“The Rezone is flatly inconsistent with the General Plan. The 2022 Housing Element Amended the General Plan.The Rezone creates new building heights, density and development intensity that is flatly inconsistent with the 2022 Housing Element. Since zoning must be consistent with the General Plan, the Rezone creates an unlawful General Plan inconsistency.”
Further, Drury adeptly points out that:
“The proposed Rezone is vastly different from the zoning studied in the 2022 Housing Element and its associated 2022 EIR. Nevertheless, the Planning Department proposes to rely on the 2022 EIR. A rezoning of this magnitude requires thorough environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) so that the City’s residents and decision-makers can be aware of its impacts, can consider all feasible mitigation measures and alternatives, and can have a robust and open discussion prior to making irreversible changes to San Francisco’s landscape for all time.”
This plan would reshape San Francisco for generations without clear predictability on what gets built or where. San Franciscans deserve full transparency about the land‑use decisions that will shape every neighborhood.”
NUSF contends that the Rezone includes significant additional areas of the city, including areas within the so-called protected “Priority Equity Geographies,” vastly taller height allowances, density decontrol and excessive development that was not envisioned in the 2022 Housing Element or its associated EIR. The City has not thoroughly assessed the impacts of these actions on key environmental factors such as Air Quality, Wind, Historic Resources, and Biological Resources. Further, in its limited Addendum, the City has not fully analyzed how its Rezone would greatly increase tenant and small business displacement. Lastly, the Rezone would significantly impact transit lines and this has not been given enough credence in the minimal EIR Addendum issued by the City.
Lurie’s proposed Rezone would change the face of our city forever and thanks to 2019 legislation SB-330 supported by State Senator Scott Wiener, the so-called “Housing Crisis Act” once San Francisco upzones, it can’t downzone. The Rezone would be permanent and irreversible. NUSF is asking the Planning Commission and Mayor Lurie to listen to our over 60 neighborhood and community groups and organizations. The Mayor should pull back on the proposed extreme heights and density that would be allowed in the Rezone. Additionally, a vast number of San Franciscan’s are not aware of this proposal. Unfortunately, the proposed Rezone has no guarantees of affordability and will in fact only fuel speculative, luxury development that will not solve our affordability crisis.
“This plan would reshape San Francisco for generations without clear predictability on what gets built or where. San Franciscans deserve full transparency about the land‑use decisions that will shape every neighborhood.” says Lori Brooke, Co-founder of NUSF… (more)
NUSF Supports:
Context-fit housing: Build new homes at a reasonable, human scale that complements surrounding blocks.
Real height limits: Set reasonable, enforceable caps, no routine waivers. Extreme increases would erode neighborhood livability and fabric.
Responsible density decontrol: Allow added units only where height limits remain unchanged and the State Density Bonus does not apply.
True affordability plan: SF Planning must publish a realistic, fundable plan with timelines to meet affordable housing goals.
Protect historic resources: Safeguard designated landmarks and surveyed-eligible sites.
Impact first: Require a comprehensive infrastructure and environmental analysis for the projected 20–25% population growth tied to the mandate.
Tonight at the PAR meeting in the Richmond, I learned that people had not received the notices regarding upzoning and they were hearing about it for the first time the day before the Planning Commisioners are considering approving the over 400 pages of legal writings and maps that supposedly define the new zoning parameters.We also learned a bit more about the only options that are so far offered to mitigate some of the negative effects the rezoning map may have on existing residents and businesses. People are concerned and angry people when they learn about the plan. They are really upset with Senator Wiener who has been relentless in his efforts to usurp control over the entire state by removing single family zoning. Trust in government is at an all time low for a reason.
Tenants, neighborhood groups, and some supes are saying the plan will hurt renters and small businesses—and needs more environmental review
Opposition to Mayor Daniel Lurie’s plan to upzone much of the city is emerging on several fronts, from tenants, small businesses, and a neighborhood group that argues the sweeping plan never got a valid environmental review. There’s also a serious problem with providing transit service to the new residents.
Meanwhile, two supervisors are pushing legislation to address some of the displacement concerns, and Lurie has already said he will support one of those bills…
At Question Time today, Sup. Myrna Melgar told Lurie that a lot of people are worried about the displacement of small businesses and rent-controlled housing units.
Lurie said “we will not leave rent-controlled units and small businesses behind.” He insisted that “most new housing is built on vacant land,” which may be the case now—but there’s no way to build the tens of thousands of units his plan envisions without demolishing existing residential and commercial structures.
Melgar has introduced legislation that provides incentives to developers and landlords to protect housing and small business:..
Meanwhile, Sup. Chyanne Chen has introduced a broader bill. The Race and Equity in All Planning Coalition issued a statement saying that it will work with Chen to make sure the bill:
Requires disclosure of plans to demolish and early noticing of rights to tenants;
Prevents wrongful evictions and holds landlords accountable for bad behavior;
Guarantees the maximum possible relocation assistance allowed under the law; and
Enforces tenants’ rights to return to a comparable unit should their building be redeveloped…
The answer won’t be known for months, but an inflection point will arrive Thursday, when the planning commission takes up what Lurie calls his “family zoning” plan. It’s a far-reaching proposal that seeks to expand the city’s housing supply by allowing taller residential buildings from Fisherman’s Wharf to the west edges of the Richmond and Sunset districts.
Commissioners are expected to approve the plan, but they don’t have the final word. The plan will be taken up next by the Board of Supervisors, where some members are pushing for changes amid an outcry from critics who fear the rezoning would lead to the displacement of small businesses and allow rent-controlled housing and historic buildings to be demolished.
Lurie will have to balance competing interests as he works to ensure supervisors approve the plan by a state-mandated January deadline.
San Francisco is legally required to permit 82,000 new homes by 2031, though it will take far longer for all those units to get built. More than half the total will come from development that’s already approved; the remainder would come from the zoning plan. The stakes are high: If San Francisco doesn’t show it’s making a good-faith effort toward meeting the 82,000-home goal, the state will take control of the city’s housing approval process.
While Lurie tries to avoid a state takeover on housing, he must also grapple with political considerations…
A coalition representing organizations with concerns about the plan met with Lurie last week and sent him a letter afterward saying that the rezoning “risks fueling speculation, inflating land costs, driving demolitions, and making it harder for mission‑driven developers to build.”…
Separately, small business leaders have signed onto another letter to Lurie warning that the plan could “force closures of businesses that have served San Francisco for generations.” That letter asked the mayor to work with neighborhood groups to identify locations for denser development “without destroying existing corridors.”
At a news conference last week, Lurie told reporters that his administration was “always happy to discuss” the plan with critics. He promised to “work tirelessly to protect our small businesses,” and his planning director, Sarah Dennis Phillips, said the administration was receptive to “helpful modifications” embraced by the San Francisco Small Business Commission…
Mandelman said he wants Lurie’s administration to commit to a plan for preserving some of the city’s older buildings, either by creating new historic districts or designating individual landmarks…
Some of the same people pushing for the recall are also outraged about Lurie’s zoning plan — a fact that may weigh on the mayor if he is tasked with appointing a replacement for Engardio…(more)
If you live in SF, or in the state of California you have probably heard something about Upzoing plans. If you are confused about the maps and the plans, you are not alone. See the September meetings listed on the calendar for where you may go to learn more: https://csfn.net/csfn-events/
People who try to follow it are constantly finding themselves running down another rabbit hole that leads back to Sacramento and our most controversial State Senator Wiener. After Wiener and Newsom removed the authority of the California Coastal Coastal Commission to control development on the California coast, Wiener is pushing SB 79 to remove single family zoning from the entire state. See the map below that attempts to illustrate the effects of SB 79 on the SF Zoning map
This iMap is supposed to indicate he targeted areas for SB 79
Wieners enemies may outweigh his friends, but his friends hold a huge, powerful purse and they are shifting him toward Washington. Some would like to see him go just to get him out of Sacramento, but others want him permanently out of politics. Given his close ties to the most unpopular SF Supervisor in SF, and the disdain hundreds of cities and communities around the state have for him, Scott may need more than money to win the Washington post he covets. But we are here to look a the maps.
The SF Planning Department has created many maps and overlays and new ones are popping up all the time. Everyone appears to be confused.
The below map that indicates where density decontrol may be applied is perhaps the most disturbing as it covers the entire city, including those neighborhoods that were already up zoned in the Eastern Neighborhoods.
Density decontrol is a new term that applies to the minimum size of a unit. It appears there is no minimum requirement where destiny decontrol is applied.
We understand the height limits along the pink areas are also open to density decontrol.
Given all the various maps and re-zoning at the state and local levels, the one question no one can answer is, how do all the state and local density laws affect each other? Can developers apply state density bonuses on top of city height limit increases? No one seems to know the answer.
Find out more by attending one of the September meetings where discussion will be held and SF Planning explains the plans and the public gets to ask what is means to them.
Supervisor Joel Engardio loses again, but by the narrowest of margins at SF DCCC
It had all the makings of a grand political soap opera, when the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee gathered for their monthly meeting at the Ruth Williams Bayview Opera House on Wednesday night. The true excitement, the high at the old Opera House, was down the agenda a bit at #7 and innocuously labeled — 7. Endorsement of Local Measures for the September 16, District 4 Special Election.
That is, of course, the matter of the recall of Supervisor Joel Engardio. After hours of public testimony and a lengthier that usual debate among the DCCC members, a vote on whether or not to endorse the special recall election, the body ended up deadlocked 11 to 11 and the San Francisco Democratic Party officially took no position.
Now that may not sound like high drama, but it was. Most political observers expected the county Democratic Party, which is dominated by political moderates and conservatives, to side with Engardio. Without a doubt Engardio and his campaign were counting on it. And the Recallers spared no effort to keep the party on the sidelines, as many of them who testified said, “let The Sunset decide” or some variation on that theme…
“Time and again, candidates in the city have come to the Chinese community when they need votes. They come when they need campaign volunteers. They come when they want to win. But when it comes to policy, when it comes to listening to our concerns and our voices, too often we are ignored.”
Wilson Chu, Chinese American Democratic Club, in support of Engardio Recall…
… I believe this recall is more justified than earlier ones. As so many have stated this evening and over the past year, Supervisor Engardio misled voters about one of the most contentious issues in our district, presenting one position in order to get elected and then reversing himself once in office. Not only that but he then led the effort to put a citywide measure on the ballot, without input from the constituents he had misled. And while much of his campaign for Supervisor was built on fueling the divisiveness and anger around the 2022 recalls, he now argues that he shouldn’t be subject to similar anger when it comes to neighborhood street issues. That contradiction has not gone unnoticed in our community.”
Gordon Mar, DCCC member and former District 4 Supervisor…
Below the screenshot of Engardio’s voter intimidation video I have shared excerpts from California DOJ Division of Law Enforcement Bulletin #2024-DLE-11. I share it because I think it is important to understand what violations of these laws can mean.
Could this be a case of a desperate man who will stoop at nothing to save his career? Or is he just not very smart enough to follow campaign laws? Either way, he is winning a prize for the most egregious politician. He should lay off the nasty.
SB 79 still does not provide for enough affordable housing.
SB 79 will reduce affordable housing by allowing older, naturally affordable buildings to be replaced by largely market-rate buildings.
Local control of affordable inclusionary housing in SB 79 projects is a red herring – HCD severely limits this “option”.Local inclusionary built under
SB 79should override any limitations by state administrative agencies.
SB 79 is a major state override of local control. – overrides the state approved housing element and mandates unneeded density in inappropriate places.
The bill is misleading by offering local control through allowing alternate plans by localities. – Any such plan still requires inappropriate density, overrides the state approved housing element, and requires approval of HCD.
Bus routes are an inappropriate basis for rezoning property. Routes can change or be manipulated in weeks. The housing built under SB 79 will be permanent.
…