{"id":24359,"date":"2022-12-03T13:01:40","date_gmt":"2022-12-03T21:01:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=24359"},"modified":"2022-12-03T13:01:41","modified_gmt":"2022-12-03T21:01:41","slug":"these-maps-show-exactly-where-san-francisco-says-it-can-build-60000-new-homes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2022\/12\/03\/these-maps-show-exactly-where-san-francisco-says-it-can-build-60000-new-homes\/","title":{"rendered":"These maps show exactly where San Francisco says it can build 60,000 new homes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Sriharsha Devulapalli<\/a>, Susie Neilson<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dec. 2, 2022Updated: Dec. 2, 2022 9:48\u00a0a.m. (SFChronicle.com)<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Comments<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"San
San Francisco needs to build more than 80,000 new housing units by 2030 to meet goals set by the state.Jessica Christian \/ The Chronicle<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

San Francisco is legally required to show it has room for at least 82,000 more homes over the next eight years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But right now, city planners can only identify about 59,578 possible<\/a> new homes across the city given current zoning and economic conditions. This means that even in the best case scenario \u2014 hundreds of existing apartments get new units, every vacant lot gets developed and every major project gets built \u2014 the city would still be 20,000-plus units short of its minimum goal. And it\u2019s 34,000 units short of its \u201ctarget\u201d goal of over 93,500 homes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s more, even the city\u2019s best-case scenario is looking less likely as a recession looms, according to James Pappas, a senior planner at the San Francisco Planning Department.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve done our best\u2026 to accurately and realistically assess what is possible,\u201d Pappas told The Chronicle. \u201cbut right now we\u2019re at a low point in development, and so we do need to see a rebound in that for these numbers to materialize.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pappas is referring to the fact that residential building is laregely stalled<\/a> in San Francisco, with developers citing high construction costs and expensive city fees and requirements, as well as rising interest rates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These numbers come from the city\u2019s latest draft of its Housing Element, a report it must submit to state regulators every eight years to show how it plans to meet its state housing goals as part of the Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA). For the report, the San Francisco Planning Commission scours the city for sites that could host new homes or where it believes those units will get built by 2030.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To try and hit 82,000 homes, San Francisco planners placed projects into two main \u201cbaskets.\u201d The biggest is the residential development pipeline, which includes all housing projects under construction or in the approval process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The map below shows all of the projects in this pipeline, which altogether would create 44,408 new units.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second main basket of possible new housing is underutilized or vacant sites. Because San Francisco has very few vacant lots available for residential development, most of the sites are ones planners believe are \u201cunderutilized\u201d and could have more housing built on them if the math pencils out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The map below shows the sites in this basket. If every site is built on, it could lead to 11,290 units, according to the current version of the report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The city\u2019s housing element also includes a third category of 3,880 potential homes that could be built in the next eight years that are \u201cnon site-specific,\u201d including units that could be built if the city modified its zoning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In San Francisco, that\u2019s mostly homes that would be built if there were zoning changes to the wealthier, less dense western half of the city. It also includes the city\u2019s estimate of how many in-law units \u2014 often built in garages or backyards \u2014 may be built in the next eight years, along with rental homes or hotels the city could acquire and convert to permanent affordable housing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While California cities have had to submit housing elements for over 50 years, for the most part, state regulators have not rigorously enforced them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCities were just submitting maps and they knew nobody would ever look at them. Nobody would ever verify the sites. Nobody would ever come back and make sure that something got built on them,\u201d Matthew Lewis, a spokesman for the pro-housing group California YIMBY, previously told The Chronicle<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But after sharp criticisms from Gov. Gavin Newsom and pro-development \u201cYIMBY\u201d organizations, this cycle has been much stricter. Regulators have been cracking down when cities propose housing on clearly infeasible sites, like cemeteries and elementary schools. In the Bay Area, whose cities are collectively required to build about 441,000 homes, regulators rejected<\/a> 18 out of 19 initial housing element drafts; only the city of Alameda had its draft approved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cities must submit their final housing elements by the end of January, including the number of units they think can be built now and their plans to rezone enough land by 2026 to accommodate the additional 34,000 units they can\u2019t currently find room for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If these plans still don\u2019t meet the standards of housing regulators \u2014or if the city doesn\u2019t follow through on its rezoning promises in the next three years \u2014the city could lose funding for development from the state, or the ability to control where and what type of housing<\/a> gets built.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The city will host a public hearing on Dec. 15 at 1 p.m. on the latest version of the housing element. The hearing can be attended in-person at City Hall<\/a>, or by calling or videoconferencing<\/a> in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Susie Neilson and Harsha Devulapalli are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: susan.neilson@sfchronicle.com, sriharsha.devulapalli@sfchronicle.com.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Written By Sriharsha Devulapalli<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sriharsha Devulapalli joined The San Francisco Chronicle in 2022, after finishing his master’s degree in data journalism from Columbia University. Prior to this, he was working as a Product Manager for Blue Sky Analytics where he helped build a mapping platform for environmental data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previously, he was a software developer with Mint, where he was responsible for data visualizations for the newspaper’s daily data journalism page – Plain Facts. During his time there, Harsha wrote and produced data visualizations focusing on politics, development and economic issues in India.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Devulapalli also brings with him experience outside of journalism. He had worked with the Urban Design Lab at the Earth Institute, Columbia University and the Hyderabad Urban Lab. He enjoys cities, maps, long walks, vistas, all things transit and making people curious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Written By Susie Neilson<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Susie Neilson is a data reporter for The San Francisco Chronicle. Previously, she was a science fellow at Business Insider, covered COVID-19 and criminal justice for KQED and worked as a private investigator at the Mintz Group. Her work has also appeared in NPR, Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting and The New Yorker, among other publications. She is a 2019 graduate of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, where she studied investigative and multimedia reporting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read more about the\u00a0data team and their work<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"San<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\"HEARST\u00a92022 Hearst<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sriharsha Devulapalli, Susie Neilson Dec. 2, 2022Updated: Dec. 2, 2022 9:48\u00a0a.m. (SFChronicle.com) Comments San Francisco is legally required to show it has room for at least 82,000 more homes over the next eight years. But right now, city planners can only identify about 59,578 possible new homes across the city given current zoning… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24359"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24359"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24360,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24359\/revisions\/24360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}