San Francisco’s North and Westside Residents Sound Off on Housing Plan

San Francisco supervisors are expected to vote Tuesday on whether to allow more and taller buildings citywide, especially in the city’s residential western and northern neighborhoods.

Called the Family Zoning Plan, Mayor Daniel Lurie’s upzoning proposal aims to make way for some 36,000 new homes. California cities are facing a mandate from state officials to make way for more housing and have until Jan. 31, 2026, to approve a plan or face lawsuits and a loss in state funding, among other consequences.

In San Francisco, development would be concentrated along transit corridors and busy thoroughfares. It would also allow more housing construction in neighborhoods like the Sunset, Marina and Richmond districts, which have maintained a somewhat suburban character for decades.

As the Board of Supervisors races to approve the plan before the January deadline, residents in the Fillmore, Inner Sunset and Outer Sunset neighborhoods spoke to KQED about what the change could mean for them.

Since he was a boy, Todd Wanerman dreamt of living in San Francisco’s Richmond neighborhood. Clement Street, to be precise.

Born and raised in Marin County, Wanerman would occasionally come to the city with his father when he was a kid. Before heading back home, his father would take him to Norman’s Kingdom of Toys, a since-shuttered toy store in the Inner Richmond district.

“I swear I can remember standing right there on 8th and Clement thinking, ‘This is where I’m going to live when I grow up,’” Wanerman said.

He made that dream a reality in 2021, when he moved into a house on Clement Street with his partner, Erica DeSouza. They love being close to Golden Gate Park and the beach. Wanerman is not opposed to taller buildings on his block but hopes his neighborhood maintains its lively charm.

“There’s so much going on culturally — in terms of food and the farmers market,” he said. “I’m excited about the change. I just hope that we can think about preserving what makes this neighborhood so special.”

Leslie Williams has enjoyed living in San Francisco’s Fillmore District for the past 40 years. She lives in a rent-controlled unit inside a house with a garden.

“We’re part of the city, but we’re also a neighborhood,” she said. “It’s not like being in the Financial District.”

She particularly likes the low-slung character of her street; most of the buildings on her side of town are only a couple of stories tall, and she can see plenty of trees and the night sky when she goes for evening walks. She’s worried about what will happen if developers tear down existing buildings to construct newer, taller ones.

“If they tear down stuff to build something higher — I just totally disagree with that,” Williams said.

When Melanie Picardo was growing up in the Outer Sunset District, everyone thought the area was uncool, she said.

“There were not any cool restaurants, people didn’t really come out here,” Picardo said. “It almost felt suburban, very detached from San Francisco.”

Now she lives in Noe Valley with her children and husband, but she visits the farmers market on Sundays with her mom, Melva Aguirre, who still lives in the Outer Sunset. Picardo is supportive of the Family Zoning Plan and wants more families to have the opportunity to live where she grew up. But her mom doesn’t agree. Aguirre worries that more people mean more traffic and more disruptions.

“It’s going to be crowded, and it’s gonna be more susceptible to crime,” Aguirre said.

Darya Bolgova always wanted to live in the Inner Sunset District. Four years ago, she and her husband, Hardeep Singh, snagged a pandemic deal for an apartment near Golden Gate Park. Now they bike and walk around the neighborhood as much as they can.

“I like that everything is super accessible. We both have cars, and we use them very rarely because we could walk somewhere or take public transit,” she said. “It’s just very alive.”

Bolgova grew up in Moscow and enjoys the hustle and bustle of cities. She hopes that, if more housing is built, it is largely subsidized and affordable, rather than a bunch of luxury apartments. But she is supportive of the upzoning plan.

“The houses are nice and cute, but we can keep some and build up for the rest of the people to enjoy it, too,” Bolgova said. “It’s a city. We should look like a city.”