by Randy Shaw on December 8, 2025 (BeyondChron.org)
Photo of Family Zoning on SF Planning website
The battle over Mayor Lurie’s Family Zoning Plan is a fight over San Francisco’s future. Backers see the Plan opening the city’s doors to the long priced-out working and middle-class; opponents believe it widens the door to displacement without ensuring greater affordability.
The debate over building housing has long shaped city politics. And last week’s unveiling of a 25-story project on the Marina Safeway—a project Family Zoning could not stop—added fuel to the fire.
San Francisco is more divided over building apartments in single-family home neighborhoods than the Board’s 7-4 passage indicates. Yet the proposed twin towers at the Marina Safeway has unified Mayor Lurie and former Supervisor Peskin in opposition.
I’ve been foreseeing a citywide ballot measure challenging the Family Zoning Plan since it emerged (“Will Lurie’s Family Zoning Plan Divide San Francisco?, September 2). A ballot initiative is the only viable way opponents can rollback the law.
An initiative can unify anti-Family Zoning candidates across districts. It frames the next round of supervisor races around an argument that opponents believe favors them. It’s the only real alternative because the 2026 supervisor elections will not brings eight repeal votes to the Board
I’ve never believed the Plan has the huge negative impacts opponents fear. State law changes (SB 330 and SB79) have already reduced local control over housing development; these laws allow demolitions of rent-control housing and allow multi-unit projects along transit corridors and in many neighborhoods.
But the Plan hits the third-rail of San Francisco housing politics by allowing apartments to be built in neighborhoods that have stopped them for decades. And even though D2 Supervisor Sherrill ensured the Plan would not raise the 40-foot height limit for the Marina Safeway, voters could mistakenly blame the Plan, not state law, for the project.
The Marina project threw a big wrench into the Family Zoning debate. These developers interrupted Mayor Lurie’s well-deserved Family Zoning victory lap. Lurie and his allies will go all out to reduce its height.
The project also could impact the Scott Wiener-Connie Chan congressional race. Wiener’s state density bonus laws preempt local height limits; expect Chan to use the project to win over moderate to conservative Marina voters.
Framing the Debate
Two core arguments drive the Family Zoning Plan.
First, it as an essential strategy for opening San Francisco to those long priced-out. I know this message well. I wrote a book about how San Francisco and other progressive cities fail to build housing (Generation Priced Out: Who Gets to Live in the New Urban America, UC Press).
I describe in the book how the Haight-Ashbury completely gentrified without building any new “luxury” housing. The same is true for Noe Valley, Potrero Hill and other long gentrified neighborhoods. Yet most San Francisco progressives—unlike Zohran Mamdani and other New York City leftists—still believe that not building housing preserves neighborhood “character” and affordability.
Second. backers of the Plan argue that it protects San Francisco from the state mandating far more sweeping upzoning to meet the city’s housing goals. Failure to meet the state’s requirements could also result in the loss of affordable housing funds. Absent the Plan the notorious “Builders Remedy”—a state-imposed upzoning imposed on cities that flout state housing laws—could also come to San Francisco.
Mayor Lurie framed the Plan as avoiding state preemption. Ironically, the Marina Safeway project proves the mayor’s point but politically fuels opponent’s “No Wall on the Waterfront” argument.
Opponents raise two main arguments.
First, they dispute that building market rate housing improves affordability. They say the Plan does not mandate any affordable housing and that by allowing the Plan to demolish rent-controlled duplexes, thousands of currently affordable housing units will be lost.
This rent control exemption issue is curious. Supervisor Melgar’s amendment prevents the Plan from demolishing rent-controlled buildings over two units. But opponents responded to this positive step by claiming rent-controlled duplexes would now be targeted for demolition.
Melgar’s amendment sparked an online fight between the San Francisco Tenants Union (SFTU) and former D5 Supervisor Dean Preston. The SFTU pointed out that rent controlled duplexes could already be demolished under SB 330, the Housing Crisis Act of 2019. Preston insisted that rent-controlled duplexes would now be at greater risk,
But the fact is that for the past six years San Francisco has been powerless to stop the demolition of rent-controlled duplexes. If any have, they must be few since there’s been no stories about them. According to the Planning Department, from 2012-2024 San Francisco only saw 18 units of all housing types demolished per year.
Many if not most duplexes are on lots too small to build larger buildings. San Francisco builders do not find demolishing rent-controlled duplexes to be a sound economic strategy. The tenant protection provisions of state law strongly deter duplex demolitions. Raising fears among tenants in duplexes may be an effective political strategy, but its a false threat.
Family Zoning vs Prop K
Opponents of the Plan see parallels with Prop K, the measure that led to Joel Engardio’s recall. They see pro-Plan supervisors facing voters next year—Sherrill, Wong and Dorsey—as putting their political careers at risk.
But Prop K won the citywide vote. And Engardio’s big problem was that the Sunset Dunes park opened prior to the recall deadline, converting angry drivers into eager petition signers.
Prior to the Marina Safeway announcement, opponents of the Plan lacked a specific project like 1400 Washington to point to. But now the “No Wall on the Waterfront” campaign has a Marina Safeway project that closely resembles the deeply despised Fontana Towers. Built in 1962, opposition to the view-blocking project led to the city reducing heights along the waterfront to 40 feet. It took a state law preempting local zoning to enable the Marina Safeway project.
The Marina Safeway developers handed a huge present to Plan opponents. But I don’t see that project getting built at 25 stories. Mayor Lurie is not going to allow that project to undermine support for his Family Zoning Plan.
San Francisco hasn’t seen a citywide ballot initiative that creates a “which side are you on” feeling in some time. Get ready for a wild 2026 for national, state and San Francisco politics!
Randy Shaw
<I>Randy Shaw is the Editor of Beyond Chron and the Director of San Francisco’s Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which publishes Beyond Chron. Shaw’s new book is the revised and updated, The Tenderloin: Sex, Crime and Resistance in the Heart of San Francisco. His prior books include Generation Priced Out: Who Gets to Live in the New Urban America. The Activist’s Handbook: Winning Social Change in the 21st Century, and Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century. </I>
