How to Protect Your Home & Neighborhood from San Franciso’s Upzonings
Illustration by christen alqueza
January 31, 2025
San Francisco is changing the rules in favor of developer giveaways, which will make rent more expensive, increase the displacement of tenants and small businesses, and could mean neighborhoods across the City will be demolished.
The SF Planning Dept. is proposing to upzone large areas of San Francisco. Upzoning increases what developers are allowed to build making properties more expensive. Upzoning will make it harder for you to live here. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Check out REP-SF’s solutions.
Act Now!
Tell City Hall that we’re here to stay! Please register here to let us know you can come to the rally and public comment of Feb. 27.
Share our outreach flyer and tell others about the rezonings.
Sign & share our petition.
Reasons why SF’s upzoning will make it harder for you to live here:
Upzonings will make it so it’s more likely that you will be displaced. The displacement pressures and gentrification we are already experiencing through evictions, harassment & rent increases will only become worse with the upzoning.
The SF Planning Dept.’s upzonings are literally trying to increase real estate speculation and profiteering of housing, which will further heighten the vulnerability of tenants and small businesses.
Displacement will happen because 1) developers will want to sell their properties & try to get tenants out 2) existing buildings will be torn down, and 3) new developments will be more expensive, so we will be priced out.
The City knows this will result in mass displacement, but has no plans to support tenants or businesses.
A new academic study proves what our on-the-ground advocacy has always said: Upzoning increases gentrification, housing costs, and displacement, especially for people of color and low-income neighborhoods. The Urban Studies Journal Report on NYC shows what we’re up against with SF’s planned upzonings!
Your rent will likely increase. Your neighborhood will become more expensive, as developers build new luxury condos and commercial spaces encouraged by the upzoning.
Developers will rush to build luxury condos and expensive commercial spaces that tenants and small businesses cannot afford to take advantage of the upzoning.
These new buildings will not be rent-controlled.
Property values will be more expensive even before new buildings are built, as soon as the upzonings are approved.
This is because upzoning will automatically make property values more expensive by allowing developers to build taller buildings and more units on the same amount of land – driving up prices.
Affordable housing will be more out of reach. Upzoning will make it harder to build affordable housing because it will increase land values.
Getting into affordable housing will be a slim to none possibility for San Franciscans due to upzoning, as it will increase land values and property prices with the stroke of a pen.
This will mean that building affordable housing and getting land for affordable housing will be much harder to do.
Upzoning is especially harmful because the City has no plan for affordable housing. Instead they’re focusing on these developer giveaways.
Your home or neighborhood small business may be demolished. Upzoning encourages developers to demolish businesses and homes.
Your neighborhood grocery store, your favorite restaurant, and even your home may be targeted for demolition as developers are now encouraged to take advantage of the upzoning.
Developers will be tearing down existing buildings in the upzoned areas to maximize profit and build new buildings.
SF Planning knows that there will be mass displacement, but has no plan to deal with this. They have not implemented the mandated increased investments in tenant protections, nor any assistance for small businesses. Developers, with no oversight from the City, will manage all the tenant relocation and replacement of rent-control units, creating a situation rife for abuse with no accountability.
You won’t want to live in those small new units developers will build. New buildings built because of upzoning will be full of tiny overpriced studios – not homes for our families.
Developers are lobbying to stuff as many tiny market-rate units as they can into their new buildings to maximize their profits, even though these units don’t meet the needs of families or most San Franciscans.
You could experience the same impacts as people whose neighborhoods were devastated by urban renewal. We need to act to not repeat the mistakes of Redevelopment.
By encouraging developers to demolish and rebuild these areas, the SF Planning Dept. is setting up the same destructive policies of “urban renewal,” also called Redevelopment, that destroyed our communities and caused mass displacement and job loss.
As during the Redevelopment era, many areas targeted for rezonings have significant populations of BIPOC and low-income families, seniors, merchants, and workers. These policies will displace historically marginalized communities while benefiting only the wealthiest developers.
For example, historic Redevelopment destroyed Black, Asian and other communities of color in the Fillmore & Western Addition, Japantown and the South of Market. We don’t have to repeat the mistakes of the past! We can do better!
Green Apple Bookstore on Clement Street, one of the 126 Legacy Businesses that are in the targeted areas for Redevelopment.
(Photo: Joseph Smooke)
REP-SF COMMUNITY DEMANDS:
Rezone for 100% affordable housing – not luxury.
Our communities need truly equitable, affordable housing FIRST! Instead of upzoning to benefit developers, the City should be rezoning only for 100% affordable housing that is truly accessible to low and middle-income families, seniors, and workers! Otherwise, we will never meet our State mandate for 57% of our new housing to be affordable.
Build for the needs of families and working-class people.
The City is making landowners richer by making their properties more valuable. In return, we should require housing people actually need: affordable, family-sized units, with limits on penthouse-sized units and HOA fees, and replacement of demolished rent-controlled units on top of any below market rate units.
Better neighborhoods with the same neighbors by increasing protections.
We need to increase tenant and small business protections and have the City look out for tenants, not just developers. We need better rules and new City staff to help tenants and businesses prevent and survive displacement. We are recommending this staff focus on enforcement and accountability to prevent displacement, illegal demolitions, and support people through every stage of relocations.
Claim Space for Communities before upzonings.
For our communities to stay in San Francisco, we need the City to secure land for affordable housing now using landbanking strategies such as buying land and existing buildings. This needs to happen before the upzonings and land values skyrocket. Communities will lead the process of identifying sites and needs.
LOVE YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD? WANT TO PROTECT IT FROM DISPLACEMENT?
IT’S TIME TO ACT! TELL CITY HALL WE’RE HERE TO STAY!
After months of advocacy, our city-wide coalitions will be heard at City Hall so that we can push for our solutions that will support tenants and small businesses and put affordability first. We need you to join us to tell the SF Planning Commission and Department that we are here to stay!
REP-SF will be joined with our allied coalitions, the San Francisco Anti-Displacement Coalition (SFADC), Small Business Forward (SBF), and the Council of Community Housing Organizations (CCHO) at hearings on tenant and small business displacement that will include a community presentation and public comment. Suggested talking points will be provided so you can speak at public comment. Please join us in making our voices heard!
Thursday, February 27, 2025: Planning Commission Hearing on Tenant Displacement (1 Dr Carlton B Goodlett Pl)
11 am–12 pm: Press Conference in Board of Supervisors Conference Room 278
12–4 pm: Planning Commission Hearing at City Hall, Commission Chambers, Room 400: Community Presentation & Public Comment
Email info@repsf.org to RSVP!
DOWNLOAD & SHARE REP-SF’S FLYERS ABOUT THE UPZONINGS:
ARE your home or neighborhood Small businesses targeted for redevelopment?
Find out more about the upzonings. Check out our previous blog post that includes a map of upzoned areas and community voices speaking out against the upzonings.
“I want residents to look at the map of the proposed rezoned areas and think of all the small businesses and homes that are effectively slated for demolition through these rezonings, by encouraging developers to redevelop these areas.”
Areas Targeted for Upzoning
The areas that SF Planning is targeting for rezoning are in orange on this map.
View the SF Planning Dept Rezoning Interactive Map to see if your home or nearby small businesses are targeted for Redevelopment: bit.ly/SF_Rezoning_Map
