Supervisor Joel Engardio Is Out. What’s Next for San Francisco’s Sunset District?

The ballots are in, and although they’re still being counted, the result is all but certain. Joel Engardio is out as San Francisco’s District 4 supervisor.

For many in and around the Sunset District, the city’s latest recall election boiled down to Engardio’s support for closing a 2-mile stretch of the Great Highway, but already residents are gearing up for their next battle: a rezoning proposal from Mayor Daniel Lurie.

Lurie’s Family Zoning Plan aims to build more housing in the Sunset and other neighborhoods by increasing density, particularly along transit and commercial corridors, allowing for about 36,000 new homes and taller buildings on the city’s west and north sides.

The mayor, who stayed on the sidelines throughout the recall campaign, is likely to face staunch opposition from the same organizers who led the push against Engardio.

“For too long, residents have been treated as if their voices don’t count, while special interest and developers have been allowed to dictate the future of our neighborhoods,” former San Francisco Supervisor Quentin Kopp said at the recall victory party on Tuesday night.

With nearly 65% of district voters supporting his removal in initial returns, Engardio conceded the race shortly after 9 p.m. Tuesday.

“This victory, if it holds, is more than the removal of one person. It’s a declaration that our homes and neighborhoods aren’t bargaining chips,” Kopp said.

Candy-colored single-family homes, beach bungalows and family-run businesses are a hallmark of the Sunset. It’s a picturesque neighborhood that’s largely resisted the kind of development and change seen on the city’s skyscraper-studded east side.

As Lurie’s zoning proposal moves forward, the Sunset will be at the forefront of the city’s longstanding battle between preserving neighborhood character and building denser housing.

“The recall organizers have been very clear that recalling Supervisor Engardio is only their first step,” state Sen. Scott Wiener, a supporter of the zoning proposal, posted on social media platform X. “They are mobilizing to try to stop Mayor Lurie’s housing plan — a plan designed to ensure San Francisco is more affordable and that middle and working class people can actually live here.”

Supporters of the rezoning plan, who include Engardio, say it’s necessary to open more housing in a city crunched for affordable living options, and to meet a state mandate to build more homes.

“We need to build housing so we can have a thriving city. It’s very important that we think about the next generation and what we are doing to ensure they can stay in San Francisco,” Engardio said after conceding. “We need to allow ourselves to do bold things so we can have a future as a city. San Francisco needs to be the most progressive that embraces the future.”

Some of Engardio’s supporters in the Sunset agree and want denser housing in their neighborhood.

“It’s not like I’m asking for these high rises here and there. Family housing should stay family housing, but there should be more housing supply for younger people,” said Albert Lam, a Sunset resident. “Our housing prices are so expensive, like the people who lived here before can’t afford to live here anymore.”

But critics of the proposal say upzoning won’t solve the affordability crisis, arguing that it will bring in more market-rate units at the expense of the neighborhood’s renters, homeowners and small businesses.

Engardio “knows that if market-rate housing goes up, that will raise property taxes for families on a fixed income and force them to sell. He is deliberately breaking up immigrant communities, deliberately displacing our most vulnerable people,” said Otto Pippenger, a lead organizer for the pro-recall campaign. “The government’s responsibility is to the people in greatest need, not the convenience and wealth of those who are doing best. That’s what this is about.”

Supervisors have introduced supporting legislation aiming to prevent evictions and help small businesses that could be threatened by the zoning changes and development.

The amendments haven’t soothed the concerns of Sunset residents like Stephen Gorski, who voted to recall Engardio.

“What we want is representation, and we want clarity and truth and to feel like we’re being heard, which is not the case,” he said from the election victory party at Celia’s by the Beach, a Mexican restaurant in the neighborhood.

Though Lurie avoided taking a position on the push to oust Engardio — a fellow moderate Democrat who has backed many of the mayor’s policies — he released a statement after election results came in thanking those “who made their voices heard” in the recall vote.

The Sunset largely voted to elect Lurie into office, and his response to the recall shows he’s walking a tightrope trying to keep the neighborhood on his side.

“I heard countless west side families say what San Franciscans have been feeling for years: that their government is doing things to them, not with them, and that government is not working to make their lives better,” Lurie said.

After Engardio’s recall, the mayor will appoint an interim supervisor to fill his seat until voters elect a new supervisor next year. Whoever he chooses will have a challenging task ahead.

“It’s going to be intense and fierce, and whoever is brave enough to put their name out there in front of this district at this moment when they have been emboldened by these results will be a difficult needle to thread for anyone,” said Joe Arellano, spokesperson for the campaign to keep Engardio in office. “Frankly, I am concerned as a citizen who wants to see the city evolve and build more housing.”

It’s not clear who Lurie will tap for the seat. Political onlookers say it will be tricky to find someone open to revisiting the Great Highway park debate but also supportive of the mayor’s housing plan.

“He’s going to go for somebody who was really loyal, who’s going to follow the Lurie agenda and be a supporter of that,” said political consultant Jim Ross, who worked on the campaign to keep District Attorney Chesa Boudin in office when he was recalled in 2022.

Ross said this week’s vote against Engardio, driven largely by local community members who were dramatically out-fundraised by their opponents, signals that the city’s recall fever might not be going away just yet.

Engardio is the seventh elected official in the Bay Area to be recalled in recent years, following Boudin, three members of the San Francisco Board of Education, as well as Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao and Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price.

“You’re going to continue seeing recalls moving forward. This is not going to be the last one,” Ross said.

Regardless of where one stands on the housing debate, some residents said they want the city to revisit changes to election rules that could make it harder for a recall to get on the ballot.

“I would absolutely vote to minimize or eliminate recalls. You can hold people accountable during normal elections,” Eamon Barisone, a Sunset resident, said outside a polling place on Tuesday. “I voted against the [Engardio] recall because I generally don’t like recalls.”

Before he was elected supervisor, Engardio himself supported the 2022 recall of Boudin and the Board of Education members that same year. When asked if he would support changes to recall elections after his own removal, he said he didn’t yet have any comment.

“Perhaps? But as someone who’s just been through a recall, let me process that for a bit,” he said. “But maybe.”