With AB2011, The State Is Bailing Out San Francisco’s Housing Failures Once Again
New Housing Bill Will Bring Housing to Neighborhoods in San Francisco That Need It The Most
A new housing bill that was just signed by Governor Newsom will have significant ramifications for San Francisco. It was fitting then that the Governor decided to sign the bill in our city on Wednesday.
The bill, AB2011, introduced by Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, allows for streamlining and more affordable housing on select underutilized commercial sites in transit-rich and high-density areas. It passed the Assembly thanks to a strong coalition of housing and labor advocates.
Statewide, the bill is estimated to unlock up to 2 million additional housing units. In a state that has been underproducing housing for decades, this is welcome news. Even more exciting though is the impact this bill could have in the neighborhoods of San Francisco that need housing the most.
Here’s how the bill works: If proposed developments are located within set commercial areas and commit to certain levels of on-site affordable housing and labor standards, they are eligible for increased height limits and streamlined approvals. The most generous rezoning applies to 100% affordable projects.
A newly released analysis by San Francisco’s Planning Department shows precisely which properties would be eligible for AB2011. Some of the areas eligible include:
- Financial District & SOMA — San Francisco’s return-to-office patterns place us at the bottom of every major city in the country, with just 40% of workers back in office. This means an even greater need to diversify underutilized spaces in our downtown core. Downtown can no longer be strictly for offices, and this bill offers an incentive to change that.
- Westside Commercial Stretches — The strip malls that dot westside stretches of Geary Blvd, Taraval, and Irving could all become high-density, affordable housing via AB2011. These areas are all high-resource with good access to schools, hospitals, and service, exactly where new housing should be built.
- Fisherman’s Wharf — Filled with empty parking lots and vacant buildings, it’s clear that there’s plenty of room for world class tourist attractions and housing in Fisherman’s Wharf. While tourism is returning, it won’t be back to the old numbers and has become more dispersed across other neighborhoods.
AB2011 is yet another act of the state stepping in to correct San Francisco’s housing failures. Incentivizing housing in these areas is work that the Board of Supervisors and Planning Department should have been leading on. In the absence of this leadership though, we should be thankful that the state is providing relief.
It would have been nice to see this type of leadership on housing come from our local Board of Supervisors. Instead, they’ve spent their time on other things like blocking common-sense CEQA reform and voting against 495 units of housing in a SOMA parking lot. Time and time again, they’ve shown they cannot be trusted to take our housing crisis seriously.
So, what’s next for AB2011? Thanks to Governor Newsom’s signature, the bill goes into effect July 1st, 2023. For San Francisco’s sleepy westside boulevards and sluggish downtown neighborhoods, this cannot come soon enough.
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Danny Sauter is a non-profit director who lives in North Beach. He ran for District 3 Supervisor in 2020. Let’s connect on Twitter.
