On Monday, Oct. 20, San Francisco’s upzoning plan enters the home stretch. And city supervisors are hoping to make their mark.
Several city supervisors will attend the Board of Supervisors’ land use committee meeting at 1:30 p.m. to put forward a slew of final amendments to the city’s upzoning plan.
As it stands, the plan allows housing developers to build taller, denser buildings in the city’s northern and western neighborhoods.
The amendments include excluding historical buildings and excluding low-income blocks.
The state-mandated upzoning has divided San Francisco residents.
To its proponents, upzoning is a landmark move for the historically anti-growth city. They argue that as taller buildings go up and the city gradually becomes denser, housing costs will decrease for future generations of San Franciscans.
Upzoning opponents paint a bleaker future, one where housing developers displace residents and businesses to build up — and there isn’t enough new housing to make a dent on affordability.
Supervisors have already announced amendments geared toward addressing some of these concerns.
On Monday, District 7 Supervisor Myrna Melgar, who chairs the committee, will formally introduce her amendment to remove rent-controlled buildings with three or more units from the plan. This amendment is being offered with the blessing of the mayor’s office.
Other supervisors intend to introduce amendments that require new buildings to include a larger percentage of units with two or more bedrooms to make the plan more family-friendly, exempt some historical buildings from the increase in height limits and remove areas that have higher concentrations of low-income residents and people of color.
Three supervisors — Melgar, Bilal Mahmood and Chyanne Chen — sit on the committee, but other supervisors can introduce amendments with their support.
After the legislation is amended in committee, it will go to the full Board of Supervisors for a final vote (making amendments directly at the board is technically possible, but uncommon).
Contemplating the largest slew of amendments is District 1 Supervisor Connie Chan, who represents the Richmond, a district heavily affected by the upzoning plan.
She has a list of 11 changes she’d like to see, including removing buildings in the city’s designated coastal zone, legacy businesses, and all inhabited housing — not just rent-controlled — from the plan.
“When we have good protection from demolitions and displacements in place, then what is left is the incentives for developers to really focus on vacant and blighted lands,” Chan said.
But some of these changes may not pass muster with the state. After all, San Francisco didn’t decide to rezone on its own; it’s required to by the state.
Every eight years, the state of California assigns cities and counties a certain number of housing units they need to build to meet housing needs.
In this last cycle, which began in 2023, the number of units assigned to San Francisco jumped from 28,000 to 82,000, thanks to a law passed by San Francisco’s Sen. Scott Wiener.
“To be honest, it was a joke,” Wiener said, referring to the former state goals, which were far more modest and had no consequences for failure.
San Francisco is highly unlikely to actually build 82,000 units by 2031, since the costs of construction are currently very high. But the state wants San Francisco to create conditions where, if costs fall, that goal could be met. That’s where the rezoning comes in.
By allowing taller buildings and more units per lot, rezoning will lead to more housing production. In total, San Francisco’s rezoning needs to create the capacity for 36,000 additional housing units (around 58,000 are expected to be built under current zoning).
Any amendments that are made by the board have to maintain this capacity for 36,000 units, or risk the state finding the zoning plan non-compliant, a finding that would take away the city’s power to approve or reject new developments and give that ability to the state.
In a Sept. 9 letter to San Francisco’s city Planning Director, Sarah Dennis Phillips, Paul McDougall, a senior program manager at the California Department of Housing and Community Development, warned that, while the city’s plan is currently compliant, the city should be careful about “introducing potential constraints on development.”
“Examples include adding labor provisions, removing and replacing sites, reducing capacity, [and] affordability requirements,” McDougall wrote.
Melgar’s amendment to remove rent-controlled housing should be in compliance, since the city already assumed that those buildings were not going to be redeveloped. But other changes, like Chan’s desire to remove all inhabited buildings, may have a larger effect on enabling 36,000 new units.
Avoiding a state takeover, also known as the “builder’s remedy,” has become a talking point that supervisors and Mayor Daniel Lurie have trotted out to convince skeptical audiences that they should support the plan.
Under builder’s remedy, “there could be towers everywhere,” Lurie told Sunset residents on Oct. 6.
At noon on Monday, Chan, three other supervisors, labor leaders, tenant activists, and supervisor hopefuls in Districts 2 and 4 will hold a rally on the steps of City Hall to discuss concerns about the plan.
The Land Use Committee meeting will be held in the Board of Supervisors legislative chamber, Room 250, on Monday, Oct. 20 at 1:30 p.m.
It’s easy to understand the psychology of folks who live in a place like Fairfax and oppose an 8-story apartment building on their main street. But the extent to which people get riled up about building an 8-story apartment building on Market Street or Geary Street in San Francisco is just bizarre. Irving is on a direct train line to downtown but this corridor should for some reason be barred for development by government edict? San Francisco as we know it would not exist if rules like this were in place decades ago.
While we bicker, cheaply built Draeger homes on the west side become dingier by the year, with no corresponding decrease in prices. In fact pretty much every SFH on the west side is now a million dollar home. Nice deal for those already in them paying 1995 property taxes.
Peter Cohen of CCHO (formerly influential, currently exiled in North Bay due to, ahem, reasons) told me he opposed market rate housing in the mission because the people who live in it don’t vote the way he prefers. It’s the only explanation that fits the bill: politicians trying really hard to choose their voters.
Why don’t we let him speak for himself rather than try to parse the words from your memory instead, eh?
Frankly he’s right – market rate housing is being snapped up by the neo-riche techie class that parasitically destroys SF neighborhoods and reduces an entire community down to social media groupies.
Market rate housing means you make more than 100k and because there’s no cap, it’s going for 30-50% over asking prices to Private Equity speculators all day long. “234 Mission St. LLC” etc.
If SF is going to survive the techie parasite invasion we need some strong protections, while the YIMBY sellouts are happy to pretend the little people who built SF and existed here paying all the bills and sweeping the streets for decades are the “real” problem, the impediment to their (dystopian, corrupt, cliquey) vision of the future.
(Peter Cohen is not the spokesperson for people who notice this trend, and certainly not through a 3rd party’s translation…)
What’s bizarre is pretending developer giveaways will lower rent prices.
Bizarre as in dumb, a lie.
Your rent is not going down in any event. Why should it? You can already afford it or you’d have been evicted by now.
The idea here is to build more homes because of demand. As a side-effect, rents will go up less than otherwise. And if the City fails, the Sate takes over so we don’t have a choice.
In the free market you often whine in favor of, there is no limit to the demand. We’ve got thousands of units citywide sitting vacant because of Private Equity speculators, corporations. You defend that and pretend it doesn’t affect things while whinging about abstract free market concepts you don’t actually understand or apply.
The idea here is stop being a mouthpiece for a YIMBY fraud you don’t even comprehend because you literally don’t spend the time attempting it.
YIMBY parrot forgets own script ^
Was it a developer giveaway when someone built the home you live in?
So did I assume to much by thinking you live in a home that was built? Do you live on the streets or in a home immaculately conceived out of the fog?
Jake T when you have an actual argument be sure to wake the night nurse. Your toothless attacks land on exactly zero flesh, child.
You have no idea where anyone lives or who built what, tool. Typical YIMBY tactics, attack anyone pointing out shortcomings in their BS “plan”…
Peskinites want to stop any change in North Beach but also make creating North Beach type density illegal anywhere else in the city. Make it make sense.
You don’t pay attention well.
If I own a home or a business with an upstairs unit and I choose to rebuild it into a multi-family apartment, who is Connie Chan to tell me I can’t? What tenants is Chan protecting by exempting owner-occupied and non-rent controlled properties? If Chan believes that there should never be apartment construction on any inhabited place in San Francisco then suddenly homeless encampments make sense. It’s the disposition of Progressives that the only legal place to erect a dwelling is on the sidewalk and nowhere else.
“Builders remedy rolls forward in Beverly Hills Planning Commission signs off on 90 units across two developments.” (The Real Deal. Oct 16, 2025). Whether by Lurie, HCD or SB-79, the day of reckoning is here for NIMBY and the years of unaffordability and displacement NIMBY has brought to the city since the downzoning of 1978.
Chan isn’t changing the law, learn how to read better.
“Upzoning opponents paint a bleaker future, one where housing developers displace residents and businesses to build up — and there isn’t enough new housing to make a dent on affordability.’
This is exactly why these “opponents” do not understand the purpose of the State mandate. It is not to make housing more affordable at all. It is to ensure that all CA jurisdictions provide more supply to meet the ever increasing demand, so that housing costs do not go up as much as they otherwise would do.
If the Supervisors knew how to make SF housing cost the same as Iowa, they would have done it by now. But in fact they have made things worse.
There’s thousands of vacant units in SF right now.
You always apologize for Private Equity speculators, you just don’t have the abstract intellect to do so honestly in a straightforward argument.
Thousands? Prove it.
The current figure is between 40,000 and 60,000 vacant units. In 2022 the City Budget and Legislative Analyst audit of vacant units was requested by Supervisor Dean Preston. The audit utilized 2019 census data and identified roughly 40,000 vacant units in San Francisco. It found that approximately 8,500 of these were vacant for “seasonal, recreational or occasional use”—a proxy for investment properties—while 8,000 were listed as “sold, not occupied”.
A 2025 follow-up analysis revisited census data and estimated that approximately 5,000 vacant units could be attributed to investment properties and 7,000 to “occasional use”.
Growing investment properties: A 2025 analysis noted that homes sold and left unoccupied grew from fewer than 900 in 2012 to over 10,270 in 2021. While a small percentage of the total housing stock, this represents a significant increase in vacant investment properties.
David demands proof of basic sh!t again.
“GRAVITY? PROVE IT!”
Smh, go outside tool. DISPROVE IT!
Wait. So Weiner, Lurie, Mahmood, Sauter, Todd David, Corey Smith, Jane Natoli, BroSF and the YIMBYs all huff & puff about the boogie man “builder’s remedy” while they ignore state mandated affordable housing requirements? Enforce one state requirement but not the other?
nope, just because you say it doesn’t make it true.
Exactly. And they pretend CEQA is optional in the process.
YIMBY = Liars for Developer Private Equity Sellouts
connie chan is a slimy opportunist. exempting any inhabited building from upzoning? does she understand how zoning works? can’t wait to vote against her when she runs for congress.
Lurie’s upzoning plan for the northern and western neighborhoods is reckless and criminal. It will destroy their charm and character, will ruin views, and will lead to more crime and traffic jams. I am curious to know how many of Lurie’s friends and associates will profit from this crime againt San Franciscans. Shame on you Mayor (if you have any).
won’t somebody think of the neighborhood character and the views!