San Francisco Rezoning Makes Room for 34,000 Housing Units

In an update to its housing element, San Francisco plans to allow for 34,000 additional housing units via rezoning. As J.K. Dineen writes in the San Francisco Chronicle, “The 34,000 units of ‘added capacity’ will be focused in ‘high-resource’ commercial corridors of the city — much of it in the Sunset and Richmond districts — that have not seen much development in recent decades.”

Per California’s Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA), the city needs to create 82,000 housing units by 2031. “In addition, the element must create a blueprint for ‘fair housing,’ which means that a significant amount of the new residential development must occur in ‘well-resourced’ neighborhoods where discrimination and zoning rules have historically combined to keep out newcomers — especially people of color — and new buildings.” Sometimes viewed as a toothless exercise, the RHNA came into focus this year when the state rejected housing element updates from many cities, citing unrealistic projections or insufficient efforts to meet housing demand and provide for affordable, inclusive housing.

San Francisco’s new housing element acknowledges the challenges to adding new housing in the city. “In addition to increasing the amount of housing planned for rezoned neighborhoods, the new housing element draft added analysis on the factors that slow down housing production, such as the city’s politically-charged discretionary review process.” For example, the city will consider eliminating conditional use permitting for replacing single-family homes with multi-unit buildings.