A "For Rent" sign hangs in the window of an apartment building in Nob Hill in San Francisco on July 29, 2021. New legislation from Supervisor Bilal Mahmood could reform the city’s housing stock to allow more unrelated roommates in San Francisco. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)
San Francisco Supervisor Bilal Mahmood is introducing legislation that could expand access to shared housing by removing the city’s current cap on the number of unrelated individuals who can legally live together.
Mahmood’s proposal this week calls for an update of an obscure city planning code which restricts the number of individuals who can legally live together in the same “dwelling unit” to five — unless they’re legally related or share meals and groceries.
Mahmood’s legislation would replace the term “family” with “household” throughout the Planning Code.
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“We’re one of the last cities to actually amend our city code to make sure that we’re not discriminating between how people want to live,” Mahmood told KQED, alluding to a state law that bars discrimination between related and unrelated people.
“So I think it’s time that San Francisco has our city code reflect our inclusive values,” he said.
The proposed change comes as young people have left San Francisco in droves, with the share of the population of residents in their 20s decreasing from 18% to 14% between 2013 and 2023 — the largest drop of any big city in the U.S., the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
A bus passes by a Victorian home next to a modern apartment building in the Fillmore district of San Francisco on June 9, 2023. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)
Josh Masimore, a 30-year-old property manager of a co-living space in Russian Hill, said he received over 400 applications for a single spot in his shared space this year.
While San Francisco has long embraced co-living arrangements in tech dorms or “pods,” single-family homes and large apartments have been off-limits.
Turning down so many people was disheartening, Masimore said, and he reached out to real estate agents and architects about the prospect of potentially acquiring another property to make into a co-living space and expanding his community.
“Well, this property has more than five bedrooms, you’re breaking the law, you shouldn’t do that,” Masimore said, recounting realtors’ responses to their inquiries. “We were just hearing pushback.”
Those reactions emphasized the need, Masimore said, for a legislative overhaul.
“The industry creates their housing products with that rule in mind,” Masimore said.
Under San Francisco’s present code, households with more than five unrelated residents must meet more stringent “group housing standards”. This includes barring group housing units from having a full kitchen, and allowing only “limited cooking facilities.”
Dan Sider, the city planning department’s chief of staff, confirmed that since 2020, his agency has taken action against those violating the five-person law 14 times.
Mahmood, who was elected in November, said developers and residents have already reached out to his office with reservations about breaking the law.
“When they found out about this law, they were afraid of building more co-ops and more shared housing,” Mahmood said. “They didn’t want to cross this five-person threshold.”
Masimore said he believes this new legislation could see more co-living spaces and co-ops sprouting in the city.
“If we just completely fail to deliver on this type of housing product, the housing option that so many young people want, they’re gonna go to the places where they can have it.”
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