SAN FRANCISCO — In the staring match between San Francisco and state housing regulators, the San Francisco just blinked.
On Tuesday, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors passed legislation sponsored by Mayor London Breed to overhaul the city’s famously convoluted housing approval process.
The 9-2 vote was taken under regulatory duress. In October, California’s housing department released a damning audit of San Francisco’s housing policy, with a checklist of “required” reforms. After the board failed to take up the mayor’s proposed overhaul late last month, the California Housing and Community Development Department issued a very public warning.
The possible consequences for further inaction included:
- “Ineligibility or delay in receiving state funds” for housing and transportation programs;
- Possible legal action and court-imposed financial penalties;
- Revocation of the state’s approval of San Francisco’s housing plan, opening the city up to the development free-for-all known as the “builder’s remedy.”
San Francisco’s new ordinance, which formally needs a second vote and the mayor’s signature before becoming law, doesn’t address every one of the state audit’s complaints. It also includes a few added restrictions to limit demolition of historic buildings and those protected by rent-control.
- David Zisser, the state housing department’s assistant deputy director: “While an encouraging first step, HCD is still evaluating the latest amendments…HCD also looks forward to receiving the City’s response…explaining how it has implemented other overdue required actions.”
Cities and counties across the state have spent the last two years racing to cobble together “housing elements” — plans meant to show how they will permit enough housing to accommodate state-set production goals.
Now that a majority of those plans have received the state’s regulatory a-okay, it remains an open question just how aggressively California housing regulators plan to ensure that cities and counties actually make good on those promises.
If San Francisco is anything to go by, the answer seems to be “pretty aggressively.”
That’s welcome news to the city’s state senator, Democrat Scott Wiener, a former supervisor and now one of its sharpest critics on housing policy.
- Wiener, in a statement: The vote “by the Board of Supervisors, combined with our work at the state level, is the beginning of a new day for housing in our City…I congratulate the Board of Supervisors for seeing the need for change and working in partnership with the State.”
CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.
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