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The Voters Have Spoken
Former Mayor Breed achieved something the now-retired emergency outdoor sirens could not—she woke up the neighborhoods! Her extreme and deeply unpopular upzoning plan sparked a full-scale revolt, ultimately leading to her defeat.
Mayor Lurie, we trust your political instincts are as sharp as your Levi’s style. We urge you to collaborate with San Francisco’s diverse communities and interests to create a shared vision for the city. NUSF is ready to partner with your administration and the Board of Supervisors to build a city of affordable, thriving neighborhoods.
Rejecting the False Choice of Upzoning
This begins with our local leaders rejecting the baseless idea that upzoning is the only way to comply with the state’s outdated and unrealistic housing mandates to avoid penalties like the Builder’s Remedy, which allows unchecked development.
This is a false dilemma. Our city has already been penalized and forced into ministerial permitting—a process that fast-tracks development by bypassing public input and detailed review. Upzoning does not guarantee affordability; in fact, it often leads to the construction of luxury units that do little to address the housing needs of working families. Our leaders must push back against this punitive, statewide overreach that sets our city up for failure—and say the quiet part out loud—the penalty is the plan!
Developers, Not Cities, Control Housing Supply
The reality is that cities do not build housing; they approve it—as San Francisco has done with the over 72,000 units of entitled housing in our pipeline. Penalizing our city for missing quotas ignores the fact that private developers control construction and will not oversupply the market at the expense of their profits. The YIMBY claim that abundant supply solves housing affordability is intentionally misleading and fundamentally flawed. Expecting developers to build San Francisco's mandated 82,000 units, including 46,000 affordable, by 2031—without infrastructure funding for 200,000 new residents—is magical thinking.
On top of that, the current market makes large-scale development nearly impossible. Consider the following:
- fewer people are moving to the city,
- construction costs are continuing to skyrocket,
- labor is in short supply,
- interest rates are high,
- there is a glut of unsold and unoccupied units, and
- a declining demand for new luxury housing.
These challenges underscore why relying on for-profit developers to solve the city’s affordable housing issues is both impractical and disconnected from the economic realities on the ground.
Focus on Revitalizing Downtown, Not Disrupting Neighborhoods
Urban planning should prioritize addressing downtown’s significant challenges without undermining the strength and rich history of San Francisco's thriving neighborhoods. Local leaders must reject one-size-fits-all mandates that ignore what makes San Francisco unique.
Your voice is crucial in holding our leaders accountable and ensuring that future development reflects the needs and values of our communities.
What's Next?
The SF Planning Department is set to release its final upzoning map in the coming months, raising concerns that it could reflect the same extreme and unnecessary, YIMBY-driven version championed by former Mayor Breed (current map).
Currently, most of the city's vibrant residential neighborhoods and commercial corridors have 40-foot height limits (around 4 stories). However, state density laws, such as those promoted by Senator Wiener, already allow buildings up to 8–24+ stories in exchange for a few token affordable units. Projects using these developer-biased density laws are already being considered in established neighborhood corridors streets like Castro, Chestnut, Clement, Geary, Irving, Judah, Lombard, Noe, Polk, Sloat, Sutter, Union, West Portal and many others.
Layering upzoning on top of existing density laws would drastically increase building heights, fueling speculation, displacement, and gentrification—without delivering meaningful affordable housing.
Practical Solutions for Affordable Housing
If the goal is to create more affordable housing, the following solutions are more likely to achieve that outcome—and they are approaches the vast majority of residents and businesses can support:
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Prioritize the 72,600 already-approved housing units in the pipeline, ensuring these projects are advanced before considering additional upzoning.
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Address the growing number of residential and commercial vacancies, turning empty spaces into opportunities to revitalize neighborhoods and support local businesses.
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Focus on revitalizing downtown to restore economic vitality and create a more balanced housing and business ecosystem.
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Explore "Density in a Box" solutions allowing more housing units within current height limits. This approach avoids the dramatic height increases permitted by state density bonus laws, which often yield minimal affordable housing and provide little benefit to the neighborhoods impacted.
Our city should resist pressure from developer lobbying groups that prioritize profit over people. Instead, we must pursue policies that ensure San Francisco’s long-term well-being, preserve its distinctive identity, and meaningfully address housing affordability.
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