San Francisco is Planning For Inequality: Response to Sacramento’s Comments on SF’s Housing Element
PRESS RELEASE FOR Monday, August 8, 2022
The Race & Equity in all Planning Coalition (REP-SF) releases this statement in anticipation of upcoming comments from Sacramento on San Francisco's proposed housing policies.
Equity will not be built with tens of thousands of new high priced housing units. The city needs to focus its resources on building housing that San Franciscans can actually afford.
San Francisco's Planning staff stated during their presentation of the Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR), that Planning expects the State's Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) to respond to San Francisco's draft Housing Element in August.
Based on HCD's prior response to the draft Housing Element from the City of Los Angeles, REP-SF anticipates that HCD may signal to San Francisco that they may reject San Francisco's Housing Element. While the state may criticize San Francisco for not being more aggressive with its strategies to meet its mandated housing development target of 82,000 new units over the next eight years starting in 2023, REP-SF feels that this critique would severely undermine what Planning has stated is its goal to center its housing policies on equity.
Given the fact that San Francisco exceeded its housing production goal for high income housing by 10,000 units during the current Housing Element cycle (ending 2022), and fell short on its production of lower income housing by roughly that same amount, the REP-SF Coalition says it is time to reverse this trend and commit to an aggressive development plan for truly affordable housing. We have clearly seen that these policies that prioritize market rate housing have led to increasing displacement, homelessness and inequality. Please see the attached comment letter from REP-SF to Planning.
With community groups taking a leadership role, REP-SF calls on Planning to work together with the Mayor's Office of Housing and Community Development (MOHCD) and the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (SF HSH) to define a land use plan and resource allocation plan to identify and purchase sites for new affordable and supportive housing. The current draft Housing Element fails to present a plan for reversing years of inadequate affordable housing production.
REP-SF and our three dozen organizations are committed to working with these city agencies to put together a comprehensive plan for Equity in Land Use that will move these principles forward, and meet the city's compliance obligations per HCD's requirements in a way that ensures that we are developing an equitable San Francisco.