It’s hard to imagine that a majority of the district supervisors in San Francisco would vote against informing their constituents about one of the largest zoning changes in the city’s history, a program that would impact hundreds of thousands of tenants, property owners, and small businesses.
But that was the way things seemed to be going at a Land Use and Transportation Committee hearing Monday.
Sup. Connie Chan has introduced legislation that would require the Planning Department to send a notice by US mail to every residential or commercial tenants and every property owner within 300 feet of a proposed zoning change.
That’s not an unusual request: Those notices already go out when s a significant development project is proposed in a neighborhood.
The rezoning plan is a huge deal: It could transform many neighborhoods on the West Side, increasing height limits and density along commercial corridors and in some residential areas.
It would allow developers to buy and demolish existing buildings to make space for much bigger buildings, as long as there are no rent-controlled tenants. Demolishing most existing housing of any sort will still require Planning Department approval.
Still, the whole concept of the plan is to meet a state mandate to allow for more than 80,000 new housing units, which means if it works, a lot of low-density neighborhoods will see much bigger buildings and many more residents—and most of that new housing will be market rate, which means out of reach to the majority of existing neighborhood residents.
I don’t see how this can happen without widespread displacement. For the record, the planners disagree.
But, as many speakers at the hearing today noted, a lot of people living in the areas that would be transformed are unaware than any of this is happening. There have been stories in the major news media, but these days, not everyone reads the major news media.
Thus Chan’s bill, which would at least make sure everyone who would face an impact got a postcard with a QR code and a link to the map and to visualization of potential scenarios—that is, what the taller buildings might look like.
Why would that be even remotely controversial?
Well, Yimby Action doesn’t like it. Jane Natoli, the group’s organizing director, told the panels that the legislation is “a step beyond,” that visualization of potential (not actual proposed) building could present a “scary image.” That, of course, could lead to opposition to the zoning plan.
It’s true: If you tell 300,000 people that their communities could change dramatically, and you show them what that could look like, a bunch of them might organize against it.
Nobody said that out loud, of course. Instead, we got some classic political silliness. Sup. Bilal Mahmood complained that the notification might cost $200,000—and that doesn’t include the cost of the planning staffers’ time. This, of course, is such a tiny part of the city’s General Fund that it’s too small to measure. It’s less than the overtime costs for just one cop in the past year. It’s less than the supes just approved in legal settlements to big tech companies fighting over taxes and people abused by local law enforcement. It’s far, far less than the amount the city is offering in fee waivers for developers.
“And yet, they are nickel and diming the public,” Chan said.
Mahmood said that other large-scale rezonings, in Hunters Point, the Eastern Neighborhoods, and Soma, didn’t get this notification.
Chan, who was an aide to then-Sup Sophie Maxwell, who represented Hunters Point, said that was a serious problem; there should have been more notification. “We are here now in 2025,” she said.
Sup. Myrna Melgar said the notification is “not necessary.” She said that that when the West Side was downzoned, this sort of notification didn’t happen.
I’m going to take a moment here and explain why the West Side, and many other parts of the city, have zoning that doesn’t allow highrise buildings.
In the 1960s and early 1970s, developers were making a fortune building tall office buildings downtown. It was part of a plan (hatched by big business and developers, but never subject to any public hearing) to turn San Francisco into the finance, insurance, real estate and trade capital of the Pacific Rim.
Tens of millions of square feet of office space appeared on the downtown skyline. People in the neighborhoods were afraid they were next, that San Francisco would become the next Manhattan. Activists in 1971 and 1973 put measures on the ballot that would have capped the heights of all new buildings in the city.
City Hall, terrified that a neighborhood revolt would undermine the new Gold Rush of downtown development, had to respond—and the deal the mayor and the supes cut was that highrises would stay mostly downtown (later in Soma) and not trickle into the neighborhoods. They approved strict reduction in height limits in a lot of areas, including most of the West Side.
This had nothing, zero, to do with housing. It was all about slowing the spread of office space. In fact, the “slow growth” movement was begging developers to build housing. But the profits were higher in offices, so that’s what was built.
City planners didn’t notify anyone about anything in 1973. Different era, different issues. And not something to compare to today.
Still, Melgar said she didn’t support the proposal, but would allow it to go to the full board. She and Mahmood voted to send it without recommendation. Sup. Chyanne Chen, a cosponsor, voted no.
There are five cosponsors of the bill, Chen, Chan, and Sups. Shamann Walton, Jackie Fielder, and Stephen Sherill. That’s one short. If the usual Yimby allies opposed it, and Sup. Rafael Mandelman joins them, it will be a remarkable statement about how the interests of the real-estate industry is so important that it overrides a basic right of notice and information.
