More than two years ago, San Francisco adopted an aggressive plan to add more housing, including affordable homes, along transit corridors. Under the Home SF program, officials hoped to see 16,000 units completed by 2037.
The program lets developers exceed height and density limits in exchange for including more affordable housing in their projects, and the idea was to push more projects in historically development-wary neighborhoods.
But the program has been slow to gear up. Not one Home SF project is under construction and just three have been approved.
Now, Home SF may finally be gaining momentum. In the last few months the number of developers seeking to use it has jumped from six to 12, and three applications have been filed since October.
In the Outer Sunset, a proposal for the site of a defunct auto shop jumped from six to 20 units. In the Richmond District, an application for a property on Geary Boulevard, now occupied by an all-you-can-eat Asian restaurant and a Round Table Pizza, more than tripled from 19 apartments to 69. And in the Excelsior, where only one new housing development has been built in the last 20 years, a proposal to redevelop the home of a former preschool grew from 103 to 191 homes.
A dozen housing developments totaling 672 units have filed applications to use Home SF, which allows an extra story of height for builders willing to make 25% of units affordable and two extra floors for those making 30% affordable. The program also removes density limits from projects willing to make 23% of homes affordable.
The applications include three projects in the Richmond and one each in the Sunset, the Excelsior, the Portola, Lower Pacific Heights, Russian Hill, Potrero Hill, the Tenderloin and Bernal Heights.
With the exception of Potrero Hill, these are all neighborhoods that have seen little to no development in the last decade, even as new towers have transformed areas like Mission Bay, Dogpatch and South of Market.
While developers have been slow to propose Home SF projects, so far the Planning Commission has approved only three projects. One of the three — 20 units at 3945 Judah St. — has been appealed to the Board of Supervisors.
Senior Planner Carly Grob said that developers are finally starting to see Home SF as an attractive alternative to the state density bonus program. Under the state program, developers can increase unit count by just 35%. Under Home SF, unit count is not restricted.
"These are sites on transit corridors that have not seen a lot of development in part because they have not been incorporated into larger area plans," said Grob.
Home SF's popularity among builders jumped in 2018 when the Board of Supervisors tweaked the legislation, Grob said. While the original legislation was one-size-fits-all, an amended bill gave builders more flexibility. Developers could choose to add a single story, two stories, or simply add the density without the increased height.
Many developers want to stick to wood-frame construction, rather than the much more expensive steel-frame construction type required once a building is taller than five stories, said Cyrus Sanandaji, a managing partner with Presidio Bay Ventures, which recently won approvals on the 193-unit apartment complex on Ocean Avenue in the Excelsior.
"We found that in some cases projects were not interested in the extra height due to construction costs or community feedback," said Grob.
Presidio Bay decided to add one floor at 65 Ocean Ave. in the Excelsior — going up two stories would have increased construction costs by 35%.
In addition, Sanandaji said that two additional stories would have been overkill and would have likely fueled more neighborhood opposition. The project will inject 44 affordable units into a neighborhood that has not added any below-market-rate housing in decades.
Suheil Shatara, the architect for the proposed 69-unit building at 3565 Geary Blvd., said the opportunity to replace a single-story commercial building with housing was too good to pass up.
"With the housing crisis being as bad as it is, the more units we can squeeze in, the better it is for the city," he said.
But the new wave of Home SF projects has been met with a backlash.
Residents resisted the Judah Street project in the Sunset District — which will add one story and six affordable units. At a hearing in November, neighbor after neighbor called the project out of scale and said it would destroy the Outer Sunset's scruffy, surfer beach-town vibe.
One resident said she was "taken aback by the size and lack of context." Other residents called it "jarring," "a real estate bonanza," and "a monstrosity." Resident Dan Nicholson called the project "way too tall" and "totally nuts." Darryl Dea, lead produce buyer at Other Avenues, a co-op grocery store across the street from the proposed development, said "the height of the project is concerning to us as a business."
"Our customers appreciate the surfing lifestyle," Dea said. "Basically the project would mean no more sunlight coming into our store."
Neighbor Erica Zweig took aim at Home SF, comparing it to state Sen. Scott Wiener's stalled SB50, which would eliminate some zoning restrictions near major transit lines and job centers.
"Home SF is another version of silencing the voices of San Francisco," said Zweig.
But the planning commissioners were unsympathetic. Commissioner Joel Koppel, who lives in the Sunset, said Home SF "was created just for projects just like this."
Commissioner Milicent Johnson said that the lack of new supply in the Sunset has created a shortage of housing in a neighborhood many people would love to live in.
"We are asking every single neighborhood in our community to open minds to the fact that our city needs to change and evolve and that means more density," said Johnson.
Todd David, executive director of the Housing Action Coalition, said that while Home SF provides a good incentive to builders, other factors — construction costs, neighborhood opposition and bureaucracy — continue to make it tough to build.
"It still takes way too long to get a project through the planning commission, and we are still the most expensive city in the world to get housing built," he said. "There is still far too many neighborhoods strongly opposed to housing, and on top of that we have a Board of Supervisors that is constantly coming up with new policies that inhibit the building of new housing."
