YIMBY Groups Sue San Francisco, Arguing Upzoning Doesn’t Go Far Enough

Roughly a month after neighborhood and small business groups sued San Francisco over a housing plan they said went too far, a coalition of housing activists is filing their own suit, arguing the city’s plan doesn’t go far enough.

Representatives from YIMBY Law, California Housing Defense Fund and Californians for Homeownership said they filed a lawsuit on Thursday afternoon, alleging that Mayor Daniel Lurie’s recently-approved Family Zoning Plan doesn’t effectively make way for the 36,000 new homes and apartments required under state housing law.

At a press conference on Thursday morning, YIMBY Law Executive Director Sonja Trauss said the lawsuit was meant to show the city “tough love.”

“We are here today on the precipice of St. Valentine’s Day out of love: love for the San Franciscans who can’t afford where they live, who are forgoing essential items like health care and saving for the future,” she said. “The Family Zoning Plan is inadequate; it’s not a real upzoning.”

It comes as the city battles a separate lawsuit filed last month alleging the upzoning goes too far and could displace low-income renters and small businesses. A spokesperson for the City Attorney’s Office confirmed with KQED that the planning department can continue to implement the plan, even as it’s under litigation.

David Zisser, assistant deputy director of housing policy with California’s Housing and Community Development Department (HCD) said the fact that the city’s plan, called a housing element under state law, is the subject of multiple lawsuits does not invalidate it.

“In housing element law, two entities are named as having the authority to decertify a housing element: HCD and a court of law,” he wrote in an email to KQED. “HCD had previously found San Francisco’s housing element complaint with state law and has not rescinded that finding, and a court has not issued an order regarding San Francisco’s housing element.”

Like other cities across the state, San Francisco had to implement new development rules to allow significantly more apartments to be built across the city, particularly in areas that have been historically protected from new housing. The city’s plan focused on increasing allowable residential building heights city-wide, particularly in San Francisco’s northern and western neighborhoods.

The Board of Supervisors approved the plan in early December. Its passage came with controversy.

A few months before the plan made its way to the supervisors, the city’s chief economist released a report showing it overestimated the number of homes that could be built and did not account for expensive market conditions that have remained high after the pandemic.

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The most recent lawsuit against the rezoning plan makes the same allegations and argues the city added new restrictions, including limits on unit size and parking, that could undermine housing production.

“When the time came to fulfill the promises that San Francisco made in its housing element, the city came up short,” said Nick Eckenwiler, a staff attorney with the California Housing Defense Fund. “And so we’re here to make sure that San Francisco follows through on those and actually gets enough housing built.”

Charles Lutvak, a spokesperson for Lurie’s office, said the city is going to meet state requirements for its housing element, while protecting “what’s so special about our neighborhoods and our city.”

“As the cost of housing continues to rise, the Family Zoning Plan is going to help ensure that the next generation of San Franciscans can afford to raise their kids here,” he wrote in an email to KQED.

But on the other side of the debate, organizers with Neighborhoods United SF and Small Business Forward worry the Family Zoning Plan could be too effective. The lawsuit filed in early January by the two groups, and others, argues that the upzoning could displace people living in rent-controlled buildings and could harm historic buildings. It also accuses the city of not following the state’s landmark environmental law, the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).

Joseph Smooke, an organizer with the city’s Race and Equity in All Planning Coalition, said not everyone in San Francisco wants to live in a high-rise condo tower. He also argued that if people are displaced because their neighborhoods become too expensive due to new development, it will be hard for them to find a more affordable rental in the city.

“That household that’s looking for a new place to live is going to be confronted with whatever the market rents are at that time,” he said. “What you end up with is displacement, not just from communities, but from the city entirely.”

A settlement hearing in the Neighborhoods United lawsuit is set for Feb. 19.

Trauss said her lawsuit and the opposing one are manifestations of the local politics surrounding housing affordability, with one side arguing the city isn’t doing enough to make way for more housing, while the other said the city isn’t protecting its existing residents.

“In a way, I think it’s good that the government is caught on both sides,” she said. “It demonstrates why state intervention is needed because left just to the local politics, they’re never going to quite get over the hump.”

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