California Housing Element Law requires that San Francisco catalyze creation of sufficient accommodations to meet its Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) goals, as approved by the California Department of Housing and Community Development. RHNA mandates construction of more than 82,000 units within the City between now and 2031, with income-specific tranches.
Despite this goal, San Francisco approved an average of just eight construction permits for new residential units a month in February, March and April 2023. “…do I think we’re going to reach our goal of 82,000 units in the next either years? No, I do not,” said Mayor London Breed.
One means to address the gap between RHNA ambitions with permit reality is to dedicate excess public land to residential development. In addition to its significant properties, the City and County of San Francisco (CCSF) owns a choppy network of modest-sized un- or underutilized parcels. These plots are controlled by a myriad of public agencies – San Francisco Public Works, Municipal Transportation Agency, Public Utilities Commission, among others – which acquired them as rights-of-way, are leftovers from larger properties or reserved for future uses unlikely to materialize.
Under Proposition K, approved by 74 percent of voters in 2015, CCSF is required to re-purpose surplus public lands to affordable housing. However, little progress has been made to implement this law, particularly for small parcels.
There are 18,000 publicly-owned parcels under 20,000 square feet in San Francisco. A subset of these is on the City’s Surplus Property List. Most of these lands wouldn’t be suitable for housing. However, depending on unit typology, appropriate small parcels could support tens of thousands of additional residences.
Dedicating un- or underutilized publicly owned land to snug – less than 700 square feet – residential units would increase affordable housing supplies, fulfilling Proposition K’s requirements.
Building costs for these units would be similar to any other residential development, with actual expenses and per-home costs influenced by project scale. However, financing to build the units, and ongoing upkeep, could be secured through public-private sector collaborations that enable construction of accessory dwelling units (ADU) by adjacent property owners and/or development of four-plexes by for- and nonprofit entities, leveraging other sources to reduce taxpayer burdens associated with increasing affordable housing supplies.
Seven years after California legislators passed a series of laws to make it easier to build accessory dwelling units, nearly one out of five residences erected in the state are ADUs. Roughly 20,000 ADUs are made annually statewide, a sharp uptick from the fewer than 800 a year constructed a decade ago. Most are developed in Southern California. In Los Angeles more than 19,700 such units were built between 2017 and 2021. In excess of 1,650 ADUs were erected in San Francisco during the same period.
To unleash the housing potential of public parcels, a fast-tracked means of identifying appropriate properties and securing partnerships, affordability covenants, financing and permits would have to be created. This could consist of, for example, clear legislative guidance, implemented by a San Francisco Planning Commission/Department of Building Inspection panel that expeditiously responds to petitions – by municipal agencies or stakeholders – to develop affordable units on specific publicly owned parcels.