byJunyao Yang
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At a public hearing on San Francisco’s controversial upzoning plan, one group of homeowners stood out for their unusual request: Upzone us, they pleaded.
“Let’s support our merchants by giving them more neighbors, more foot traffic and more opportunity,” said Ted Getten, a resident of Bernal Heights, which is not in the city’s upzoning plan and made up of mostly single-family homes.
“Let’s share the responsibility for welcoming new residents across the city, including in neighborhoods like Bernal that haven’t done their part.”
Getten was one of 10 residents from the YIMBY group D9 Neighbors for Housing who urged the Planning Commission to include Bernal Heights in the upzoning plan.
The current plan focuses on the western and northern parts of the city, and Bernal Heights, just south of the Mission, would maintain its 40-feet height limit, even in areas along Mission Street and Cortland Avenue.
Some members in the audience, sensing the organized effort from the YIMBY group, scoffed as they spoke. When opponents of the upzoning asked the city to build housing elsewhere, they mocked, “Maybe Bernal; they seem enthusiastic!” The audience chuckled.
The plan, unveiled last Thursday, proposes to increase height limits mostly to 85 feet, but as high as 650 feet in some areas. It would also implement “density decontrol” in residential neighborhoods around transit and commercial streets, meaning more units per parcel.
San Francisco’s proposed upzoning map
Map by Kelly Waldron. Data from the San Francisco Planning Department and S.F. Open Data.
It is one of the most wide-ranging attempts to increase housing in decades, part of the city’s plan to meet a state mandate for 82,000 units by 2031. The changes are concentrated on neighborhoods like the Richmond, Sunset, Polk Gulch and North Beach, which are designated as “housing opportunity areas” by the state because they have “higher incomes, higher-performing public schools, and lower environmental pollution,” according to Lisa Chen, principal planner at the Planning Department.
The Bernal residents argued that their neighborhood fits all the criteria.
“Bernal is well resourced. The average home price is $1.5 million, and it has excellent transit access. But Bernal has built very, very little housing in the past,” said another member of D9 Neighbors for Housing.
Still, the YIMBYs were only about half of those giving public comments in a crowd of about 80 people, who had packed into a hearing room in San Francisco City Hall on Thursday.
Stan Hayes, former president of the neighborhood association Telegraph Hill Dwellers, called the plan “a major overreach” that “doesn’t create truly affordable housing.” San Francisco, he said, “does not have a zoning problem. The builders of San Francisco have economic problems, and zoning will not fix it.”
But upzoning is part of the fix, supporters said. The city is mandated by the state to add 82,000 housing units by 2031, and that already included some 43,000 units in the development pipeline, leaving at least 36,200 units needed through rezoning, according to a Planning Department report in 2022.
To fill the gap, the rezoning has to happen, and it needs to happen by Jan. 31, 2026. The city has also been slow to reach its building goal. Last year, there was a net addition of 1,597 units to the city’s housing stock, which was about 56 percent lower than the 10-year average, the Planning Department reported.
The most dramatic changes would occur around Van Ness Avenue and Geary Boulevard.The height limits of these high-traffic parcels would increase from 130 or 230 feet to 650 feet, or 65 stories.
On the Westside, height limits on commercial corridors like Geary, Balboa, Clement, Judah and Taraval streets would be generally increased from 40 feet to 85 feet (eight stories), while 140-foot heights would be allowed at some intersections.
New market-rate housing will also be a big contributor to affordable housing in the city, said Jane Natoli, the San Francisco Organizing Director at YIMBY Action. That happens when developers are mandated to pay a fee or build below-market-rate units in new developments.
During the hours-long public comment at the commission, Westside residents feared the plan would bring more traffic to residential streets, many of which are not equipped with the infrastructure to support more people, they said. The city should prioritize building in downtown areas and protect historical neighborhoods instead, they said.
But in the past few decades, developments in the city have already concentrated in the east side of the city. Neighborhoods like Downtown, the Mission and Bayview already have height limits matching those proposed by this plan.
Another informational hearing, specifically on small-business strategies, is slated to take place on April 17. The “family zoning plan” is expected to be introduced at the Board of Supervisors and referred to the Planning Commission around late spring or summer 2025.
Junyao is a California Local News Fellow, focusing on data and small businesses. Junyao is passionate about creating visuals that tell stories in creative ways. She received her Master’s degree from UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Sometimes she tries too hard to get attention from cute dogs.
More by Junyao Yang
16 Comments
“Westside residents feared the plan would bring more traffic to residential streets — many not equipped with the infrastructure to support more people, they said.”
Of course, the same people saying this also consistently oppose building any of the infrastructure that would help support them, because the real goal is to keep their neighborhoods exclusive and unavailable to anyone else, ever.
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And yet the traffic increased 80%, and MUNI’s deficits are 800%, and you’re still here trying to lie to our faces saying bulldozing existing rent-controlled apartment buildings to put in market rate yuppie units is somehow about helping “the housing crisis”, really?
Follow the money. “non-profit” is no longer a word that makes sense in SF.
Organizing sycophants to lie for developers is just a matter of cash on hand. ICU.
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The YIMBY BS argument once again, folks. Tip your waitress.
They remove low income housing requirements, they remove rent control, they insert inflated market rate condos and then glad-hand about like they’ve saved the world.
God I can’t stand clueless YIMBY yuppies who drink the kool aid and then seek praise for it.
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Interesting to read the negative slant casting aspersions on the “organized effort” from D9 neighborhood YIMBY groups. ML usually loves organized neighborhood groups coming to meetings and making their voices heard.
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I read the article as pretty neutrally observing that there was an organized effort. Plus that some of the other people commenting — people on the other side of the issue! — picked up on that and were snide about it.
If you read that as a “negative slant” on the Bernal YIMBY folks, I think that’s more a lens you’re bringing to the article yourself than it is about what ML wrote.
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When paid “non-profit” developer groups are packing meetings, follow the money. That’s not grassroots, that’s laying SOD.
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And what is Lurie doing to make sure the developments in the Bayview that have been promised for 10+ years will actually happen? Candlestick is just a wasteland with year-round flooding in some areas. Thousands of housing units are supposed to be built there, but they haven’t even broken ground yet. Meanwhile, people come to dump their trash there with no consequences. It’s a disgrace.
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“New market-rate housing will also be a big contributor to affordable housing in the city, said Jane Natoli, paid liar for developer interests since forever.”
Do not trust the developer’s pets, they lie and bite when you call them on it.
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don’t you have anything better to do than yell at imagined enemies online?
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HAH, a landowner’s opinion about upzoning should be thrown right out. Upzoning will make the value of their property quadruple overnight. Let’s hear from people who rely on rent controlled, affordable housing, which will be bulldozed when the owners of that housing realize the newfound speculative value of their land.
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” Westside residents feared the plan would bring more traffic to residential streets — many not equipped with the infrastructure to support more people”
If we are going to build tower blocks out by the ocean does that mean reopening the Great Highway? 🙂
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I reject the YIMBY/NIMBY framing. YIMBY are developer tools and NIMBY is their straw person fabrication, a whipping person expressed in terms of residents for the structural failure of the market to produce housing in quantities that would push down price.
But in this particular case, residents of Bernal who are in with the progressive nonprofit cartel enthusiastically upzoned the Mission to generate in-lieu and community benefit fees to feed their nonprofits, while demanding that their own aerie be encased in amber and preserved.
Amazingly enough, the previous D9 supervisor qua nonprofit funding technician was able to purchase a TIC in Bernal (weren’t TICs bad once upon a time?) when Bernal as the most desirable neighborhood in the US at the top of the market in 2018.
This is why the response to real NIMBY shitting on solidarity by predominantly whiter, richer and better connected Bernal residents against browner, poorer and politically disenfranchised residents of the colony, the Mission, is to upzone the living shit out of Bernal Heights.
I’m talking 500′ towers along the 24 Divisadero along Cortland, 500′ towers along the 49 and 14 lines on Mission, and along the 67 line. Let’s make their heads explode.
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“I reject the YIMBY/NIMBY framing. YIMBY are developer tools and NIMBY is their straw person…”
Surely you’re aware of the irony in this statement, right?
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YIMBY is a developer scam. 70% of new housing construction comes from private equity firms. Their goal is maximizing short-term profit, consequences-be-damned.
These YIMBY state laws that take away all local control over development could very well be a ticking timebomb. We don’t notice them now, because most of these projects don’t “pencil out” for developers, but the moment interest rates drop, or market conditions change, entire neighborhoods could be bulldozed to build glistening unaffordable studios, condos etc. all to suit the whims of rapacious speculators and developers. The savings won’t trickle down, if they did the densest cities in North America would be affordable, but Vancouver, New York, etc, are all the most expensive cities.
Don’t buy the YIMBY scam.
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No housing is being built in Bernal? What a self-serving lie. What about 3300 Mission St, the Big Lots site, Valencia and Cesar Chavez?
D9 Neighbors for Housing is a bunch of bullies who want to give away upzoning height limits for nothing.
How dare they pretend to represent our entire neighborhood? These jokers don’t speak for Bernal. Thank you ML for naming and shaming these real estate speculator shills. Isn’t it illegal to lobby a government body to increase your own land value? It’s despicable how they prey on families’ real fears of housing instability, pretending that more market rate housing will make the rent go down.
Density does not bring affordability without extending rent control and capturing the value we create. No upzoning without value recapture. Protect existing housing with community-based planning, 100% affordable housing only, and funding publicly owned housing with revenue bonds. No blanket planning decisions about us, without us!
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D9 Neighbors for Housing actively supported both affordable housing projects on Mission Street at Big Lots and 3300 Mission Street. Our goal is to increase housing in the neighborhood, district, and city to support more neighbors moving in. We’d love to welcome you at an upcoming event or chat over a coffee or tea. https://www.d9neighbors.com/
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