The plan to upzone San Francisco’s western and northern neighborhoods passed the Board of Supervisors 7-4 on Tuesday after a long, contentious process.
Voting in the affirmative were supervisors Stephen Sherrill, Danny Sauter, Alan Wong, Bilal Mahmood, Matt Dorsey, Myrna Melgar and Raphael Mandelman. Dissenting votes came from Connie Chan, Jackie Fielder, Shamann Walton and Chyanne Chen.
Developers can now build up to six or eight stories on most streets with businesses or public transportation, as long as the new building has at least one more unit than whatever was there before. Before the upzoning, developers were limited to four stories in most of the rezoned areas.
On portions of Geary Boulevard, Van Ness Avenue, and Market Street where taller buildings were already allowed, heights have been raised even further, to between 14 and 65 stories.
It is the first upzoning on the Westside since the area was downzoned in 1978. Since then, most of San Francisco’s new development has been concentrated in the city’s eastern neighborhoods, like the Mission, Potrero Hill, SoMa and Mission Bay, which were rezoned in 2009.
San Francisco’s downtown and nearby areas like Rincon Hill were also rezoned beginning in 1985, but contained fairly tall buildings to begin with.
In addition to building taller, developers can also now build as many units as they want per property, so long as they don’t exceed height and space restrictions.
Not all buildings in the city’s northern and western neighborhoods will be covered by the new zoning. Any rent-controlled buildings with three or more units were removed from the plan earlier by an amendment written by Supervisor Myrna Melgar.
Supervisor Rafael Mandelman also removed buildings that had achieved historical landmark status.
Proponents of the plan have argued that rezoning the city’s western and northern neighborhoods will help address rising housing prices in San Francisco, which have jumped dramatically since the 1980s.
“A vote against the family zoning plan is a vote for the status quo, and it is a privilege to be okay with the status quo,” Sauter said.
The status quo, Mahmood added, “forces many of the very people who make this city work … to commute from dozens or hundreds of miles away in substandard housing. We can’t keep doing the same thing and expect different results.”
“Our Family Zoning plan will allow us to build more homes so that kids growing up here will one day be able to raise their own families in San Francisco,” Mayor Daniel Lurie wrote in a statement. “This city’s affordability crisis has left too many young people, workers, and seniors unsure if they’ll be able to stay in the place they love.”
But dissenting supervisors argued that taller height limits would incentivize developers to displace tenants and small businesses, changing the character of San Francisco’s neighborhoods.
“Developing housing that people can afford without displacing residents and small businesses” is possible, Chen said. “But the plan that is before us does not achieve that.”
“Let’s build, and also let’s do no harm to existing San Franciscans,” she added.
The city didn’t decide to rezone on its own accord; the state mandated this move by strengthening enforcement of California’s housing element.
Every eight years, the state of California assigns local jurisdictions a certain number of housing units they need to build, also known as the Regional Housing Needs Allocation. This cycle, San Francisco’s assignment increased from 28,000 units to 82,000 units, due to a law written by state Sen. Scott Wiener.
But under existing zoning, San Francisco was only expected to build 58,000 units. With a 15 percent buffer, that was 36,000 fewer units than the state demanded.
To remedy the situation, the state required San Francisco to produce capacity for those additional 36,000 units, or risk ceding control over approval of new housing projects to the state, and potentially losing millions in state funding for housing and transportation.
The imperative was used to justify limiting the changes that supervisors could make to amend the plan.
Nevertheless, at Tuesday’s board meeting, Chan made a Hail Mary attempt to amend the plan to exclude all rent-control-eligible buildings, not just ones with three or more units.
“I am disappointed that we are not choosing a path to figure out a way to either negotiate or, frankly, even fight some of these mandates,” Chan said.
Ultimately it was voted down, with dissenting supervisors arguing that the place for amendments was during the four earlier committee hearings preceding today’s vote. At this late stage, changes could not be made to offset the capacity taken away by the amendment.
“I believe any attempts to make amendments at this point are more political rather than serious in nature,” Sauter said. Chan is currently running for Congress against Sen. Scott Wiener.
Even with the new upzoning plan, the number of units built will likely fall far short of the goal. A report by the city’s chief economist, Ted Egan, found that the amount of additional market-rate housing built under upzoning would be between 8,500 and 14,600 units over 20 years.
Market-rate housing development is also affected by economic factors including taxes, rents, and interest rates, and those factors are not currently favorable for housing development.
The rezoning, Supervisor Melgar said, will not, on its own, “solve our housing crisis or our affordability crisis.”
“But it is a necessary step,” she said.
The Bayview and Mission supervisors voted no on allowing a fraction of the land use permitted in their neighborhoods in 2008 to be extended to the western and northern districts for fair housing purposes. There’s not a clearer example of how S.F. politics is just a factional war between special interest groups than that. Completely detached from neighborhood reality.
Had there been ample in-lieu fees and community benefit [sic] fees directed to the nonprofit cartels, then the housing cartel would not have gone all shambolic to scare the shit out of tenants, demanding even greater protections for west and north side rent control tenants, on top of larger buildings excluded from upzoning, than the NONE that were afforded east side rent controlled buildings in 2009.
Jim Crow zoning is what’s going on here, all for raising the stakes on the CD11 race. The east side is always expendable.
The progressive message here is clear: “Connie Chan will continue to hold the east side as a colony while the west side is catered to and given special rights and access to city services.”
Wiener won with a positive if logically inconsistent message: build more housing. Progressives lost with a negative and logically inconsistent message: be scared, be very scared. As we saw in NYC with Mamdani, an affirmative politics trounces negative scare politics every time.
When will progressives realize that although they’ve tried nothing, they’re fresh out of positive ideas?
Progressives don’t run SF and never have. False argumentation.
Wiener is a liar who claims building market rate condos will make rents lower, but even he must know it’s a complete fabrication.
YIMBY lies will be paid for in the future. Their promises have never come true anywhere.
No, Wiener wants to build condos so that rich folks who arrive in SF do not instead buy your building and Ellis you.
Those won’t be built for years, YIMBY tools, and will come up at MARKET RATE RENTS, replacing decades old housing that low-mid incomes depend on. The mindless mob you represent is built on deceptions like yours.
(Also, you vociferously hate on Unions and teachers, so stop pretending to care about low-mid income workers and residents, we know you do not.)
In yet another win for the horseshoe theory of politics, our so-called progressives vote with the most regressive elements in the city to try to keep things just as they are.
Horseshoe politics? YIMBY has managed to unite traditionally opposed parties against its agenda. That’s typically a sign of a losing agenda, which is fine by me! Good luck!
Yes, YIMBY is shattering the conventional political categories altogether and creating a new pro-housing/pro-abundance super majority.
Game on, Right NIMBYs — along with your “useful idiot” sidekicks, the Left NIMBYs!
Lies. YIMBY policies have created zero units and lowered zero housing prices.
You’re putting it all on the back of low-income renters because that’s what YUPPIES do.
You don’t like progressives, poor people, or immigrants. We know.
Think of something new to say for once.
Thank god common sense prevailed.
Lies prevailed. The city has over 70,000 already-approved units ready to be built, but can’t force developers to build them.
The idea that we need to demolish 20,000+ units to make 10,000 remaining units to hit the 82,000 arbitrary number is total horsesh1t. Lurie sold out.
As a Sunset resident who shares most of Supervisor Fielder’s values, I’m genuinely confused by this vote. The Westside hasn’t been upzoned since it was downzoned in 1978, that’s nearly 50 years ago! For half a century, eastern neighborhoods like the Mission and SoMa have shouldered San Francisco’s housing burden while the wealthier west side stayed frozen in amber.
Housing is a human right. That’s a progressive principle. So how is voting to preserve 47 years of exclusionary zoning the progressive position?
Supervisor Sauter said it plainly: “A vote against the family zoning plan is a vote for the status quo, and it is a privilege to be okay with the status quo.”
I’m not looking for a perfect plan. I’m looking for leaders who recognize that blocking housing construction in wealthy neighborhoods isn’t progressive: it’s protecting privilege.
Kudos to the true progressive Supervisors Sherrill, Sauter, Mahmoud, Dorsey, Melgar, Mandelman & Wong for moving the City forward to decisively turn the page on the disastrous 5 decades of NIMBY-driven, failed, anti-housing policies.
Wong especially, as the newest member on the Board cast a courageous and conscientious YES vote, and should be applauded for not playing it safe to placate a vocal reactionary minority in his district.
Eternal shame to the reactionaries Chan, Fielder, Chen and, especially, Walton — whose self-serving, self-absorbed grandstanding was especially craven.
LOL. Tell us you don’t like ACTUAL progressives in so many words.
YIMBY loves getting paid for faux-advocacy and lies.
It’s refreshing to finally see moderates running San Francisco.
San Francisco has never been run by progressives.
So then why does SF have rent control, which few other US cities have?
Will doesn’t like Unions either.
Maybe it’s time to move, eh Will?
I hear Moscow is nice this time of year.
We need a stronger SF Republican Party. Make the Dems compete in the real world.
Just like “true” communism has never been tried — amiright?
Or trickle-down economics, YIMBY tools?
Is this sarcasm? SF’s government has always been moderate.
“S.F. upzoning would cut rents just $75 to $125 a month, city economist says.” The private market CANNOT build its way to housing affordability. We need massive wealth taxes and public housing, and expanding rent control.
What we need is programming that supports more middle- and lower-income residents to become homeowners. Poverty rental housing does nothing to build generational wealth.
That’s not a short-medium term solution.
Build low-income housing or don’t, but saying we need other things is to ignore the reality that ACTUALLY IS a housing crisis in realtime, right now. We can’t build single family homes anywhere fast enough to satisfy the top-of-market buyers. Theoretically if we started to care about the actual housing crisis, we could spend and build low-income housing and maintain a low-income labor force. We have never seriously attempted that, instead pushing YIMBY trickle-down economic BS in its place.
YIMBYism is a lie that never comes true. Who benefits?
Scott Wiener for Congress!
Scott Wiener for UNEMPLOYMENT LINE!
NO MORE LIAR YUPPIES!
“ Dissenting votes came from Supervisors Jackie Fielder, Shamann Walton”
lol surprising have they voted for anything that isn’t their own grift?
I think the time of the YIMBY is nearing its end. They’ve got basically everything they could ever ask for, yet rents continue to skyrocket, and the city economist has already forecast the upzoning and deregulation will do little, if anything to make housing affordable. All the YIMBYs have accomplished (besides making themselves incredibly unpopular) is prove to the world that market based approaches to housing affordability DONT WORK and are really just thinly veiled handouts to the real estate industry.
Failed ideologies can take generations to die out, but I’d hope we eventually see a turn to expanding rent control, and taxing the wealthy to build public housing. Those are the only things that ACTUALLY keep people in their homes, and build new housing that is affordable to working class residents.
S.F. real estate has long since been saturated. There’s nowhere to go but the sky. Do we want highrises blocking out all sunlight?
“…as long as the new building has at least one more unit than whatever was there before.”
What a joke. All the YIMBYs who think this will do anything to housing costs will wake up to quite the hangover.
10 years from now does anyone believe YIMBY lies will have lowered your rents?
It’s so laughable that they continue to claim they care about low-income residents.
Why do you think the purpose of upzoning is to “lower rent”?
I see that nowhere in the text. Rather the intent is to provide new homes for our growing population, and thereby make housing more available.
The effect of that might slow down rent increases. But nothing more than that is expected or possible.
YIMBY is me has always been predicated on the language and marketing of affordability while primarily benefiting developers and high income residents. There is not shortage of places to live in the US, for the “growing population”. But if you want to live in SF, you have to be rich.
No, new homes are needed because the population is growing. Nobody sane thinks that new units will enable people with low job skills to suddenly and magically afford to live here.
Who is talking about “low job skills”? Only you…. but with regard to cost-of-living, I refer you to this quote from the article: “Proponents of the plan have argued that rezoning the city’s western and northern neighborhoods will help address rising housing prices in San Francisco, which have jumped dramatically since the 1980s. “
Over 70,000 are already approved and the City can’t force developers to build them, but still you push your dishonest BS and gentrification.
YIMBY tools are always liars.
“”Why do you think the purpose of upzoning is to “lower rent”?”
BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT YIMBYS ARGUE in their sophomoric supply/demand rhetoric: build enough units and there will be more supply than there is demand, and prices will fall, thus making housing affordable. But it’s a lie, as the city economist points out. If you need 30k units for prices to fall $125 units per month, how many units do you need to produce for a 3bd unit large enough for a family to fall by 50%? I don’t know if the equation is linear, but the answer is most certainly “the market will never produce that much.” Enjoy the celebration YIMBYs, you got everything you wanted, and it will only serve to prove you were wrong the entire time.
Again, why do you think rents should be lower? I guarantee you that every place offered for rent is successfully let. So clearly the rent is affordable. Just not by you.
So then why is it a public policy imperative that your rent goes down? What does that do for the rest of us?
If you want to stay in a city it looks like you cannot really afford, you should want new homes for successful people, because that stops them bidding up the existing homes.
Will doesn’t think the housing crisis is real.
Except when it means developer giveaways.
Will is an actual YIMBY – he doesn’t care about lies, only results that line his pockets.
Because that’s what they claimed. No not in this article.
Maybe your attention span is only 1 article long?
It definitely won’t slow rent increases whatsoever, that’s a joke.
You are confusing two different things.
The purpose of the upzoning is to provide more housing.
The way to sell it to voters is to pretend it will “lower rents”. Of course it won’t lower rents. Nothing will and everyone knows that.
But we still need those additional homes.
READ IT. LEARN TO READ AND DO SO.
https://48hills.org/2025/12/rich-family-zoning-plan-faces-ceqa-suit/
So you’re admitting they lie to your face and that’s not a problem?
We need additional low-mid income homes. We don’t need more yuppie condo towers. They aren’t building the former.
And nothing will be built for years and years at the cost of millions because this doesn’t lower the cost of materials or labor. It’s just a giveaway. It doesn’t help anyone except $-motivated developers.
What’s laughable is that the city funded poverty nonprofits claim to care about low income residents but package and serve up low income communities to exploitation on command while city funded nonprofit executive director salaries skyrocket. These people get paid by the government to screw our neighbors.
After progs got their clocks cleaned on homelessness and upzoning, it is time to take a step back to figure out how we were led here, who led us here and why so that we can uproot the rot and begin to build anew with a fresh, affirmative progressive political appeal.
When the presence of Jennifer Friedenbach on an advisory committee draws more energy from progs than outrage at the failure to make a perceptible dent in homelessness and the collapse of the progressive agenda after being tied to that failure, this is only going to continue to get worse. It is not like progs have much more draft to work with in this drying up river.
YIMBY = All facade and propaganda. They could have had a real day by stepping up and pitching in to help fully realize the Muni Protero yard project. Yet, it was all crickets.
The the ideologically-driven onerous inclusionary requirements imposed on the Muni Potrero Yards project in concert with the gangster-like / extortionist behavior of groups like MEDA are what thwarted the viability of any significant amount of housing being realized on that site.
Fortunately, MUNI appears to have learned from the debacle, and, thus far, has kept the meddling of (so-called) “progressive” Supervisors Chan and Chen from getting their grubbing paws on MUNI’s other redevelopment sites.
Fingers crossed!
Point is, they didn’t even try.
https://48hills.org/2025/12/rich-family-zoning-plan-faces-ceqa-suit/
YIMBY lies never come true.
I’m with Chen. 82,000 got pulled out of the air and the city has no way to force developers to build anything at all. It’s a trojan YIMBY sellout.
Anyone but Wiener.
@NP – It would be instructive to track down the origin of the 82,000 figure and what it’s based on (it’s not “out of the air”). The state’s Regional Housing Needs Allocation calculates the number, but I haven’t really seen it change even as demographic and economic trends have varied wildly.
Jym, I think you are right and that the 82,000 number is arbitrary.
Nonetheless that is the number decided from on high and we need to do it, or delegate zoning to the State.
Predicating the Builders Remedy on that number and noting that no SF policies can force builders to build even 1 unit, it’s BS and you’re a cheerleader for thoughtless sellout-ism.
Voting for Lurie at all was a mistake. He flip flopped.
You’re barking up the wrong tree, this is all Scott Wiener’s doing.
Lurie is walking hand in hand with Wieners.