Community Expertise & Citywide People’s Plan Shape San Francisco’s Housing Element

PRESS RELEASE FOR Thursday, December 15, 2022

A coalition of nearly 40 grassroots organizations, the Race and Equity in all Planning coalition (REP-SF), rallied for a major breakthrough towards people-centered city planning in San Francisco in their two year advocacy campaign to center community expertise and affordable housing in the City’s Housing Element.

The Housing Element, which guides the City’s housing policies for the next eight years, received approval by the Planning Commission today after a dramatic set of amendments shaped by REP-SF’s advocacy and passionate testimony. It goes to the Board of Supervisors in January for final approval.

“REP-SF has been showing up to each Planning hearing for the past two years. We have had hundreds of hours of meetings to build a strong coalition and truly cultivate policies that center low-income and communities of color. We have advocated that the Planning Department incorporate these policies in a myriad of ways,” said Priya Prabhakar of REP-SF in her public testimony. “Community expertise must be the focal point of the Housing Element for it to truly achieve the goal of centering racial and social equity,” Prabhakar later said.

“We pushed the Housing Element away from what was an entirely market-based strategy to advocate and invest in real, deeply affordable housing to a level that the City has never seen before,” said Jeantelle Laberinto of REP-SF.

Some of the major breakthroughs towards valuing the community expertise brought forward by REP-SF member organizations in San Francisco’s Housing Element include commitments:

• For a major affordable housing resource development plan;

• To implement a landbanking strategy, which is buying development sites for future affordable housing acquisition and development;

• To strengthen the City’s inclusionary housing, which is below-market housing built or funded by market-rate developers; ● To create a system for tracking the City’s affordable housing investments;

• To the expansion of City’s Small Sites acquisition Program, where nonprofits purchase existing buildings especially where tenants are at risk of displacement;

• To affordable housing developments and capacity in the west side of the city;

• A commitment that communities should lead the discussions to determine what happens with the Central Freeway;

• To advocate for expanding State resources for affordable housing;

• To advocate for amendments to the State’s Costa Hawkins legislation, which regulates and limits rent control;

• Towards a set of actions for community engagement and meaningful input into project approvals and rezonings, including affordability levels, number of family units and generally what gets built; and

• To retain community input into development approvals, which were at risk of being removed.

While these represent major steps forward, there remains troubling language and a lack of protections against displacement in cases of demolition that will be brought on by the upzoning and developer incentives the Housing Element relies on to build the unprecedented amount of market rate housing mandated by the state.

At today’s hearing, advocates from REP-SF were especially vocal about what they called the “Developer Dirty Bomb”, (Implementation Actions 8.1.5 through to 8.1.8 ) added on December 6, 2022 that were worded to effectively nullify every attempt at equity in the Housing Element. Following public comment and Commissioners themselves raising concerns about these actions, the language was amended so they better reflected the commitment to community engagement and affordable housing found in other parts of the Housing Element.

After seeing that drafts of the Housing Element continued to rely on market-based housing, despite the State’s mandate that 57 percent of housing built in the next eight years in San Francisco be affordable (46,598 units), there was no real plan to get there. On November 14, 2022, REP-SF published the Citywide People’s Plan. The plan drew on the work of member organizations and cultural districts through the years, to create a blueprint for creating new systems for housing and land use that will ensure an equitable San Francisco for our communities now and for generations to come. The plan included a robust set of actions that can be taken at the community, city, state and federal levels to achieve this.

“I love my city. I was born and raised here. I have my family here.” said Reina Tello of PODER in her public testimony. “I just want a chance to live here and see my family grow here.”

“Getting commitments in the Housing Element is only the first step.” Tello said afterwards. “REP-SF will continue to fight to ensure our communities lead the planning of our vision for better neighborhoods, same neighbors. That is the only way to truly achieve racial and social equity, and a San Francisco for all San Francisco residents."