Fiscal Year 2022-23
Highlights

Housing for All – launched by Mayor London N. Breed – aims to make San Francisco’s certified Housing Element a reality. The Department is working with City agencies in collaboration with communities to expand housing choices, improve permitting processes, and secure sustained public funding for affordable housing.

After more than three years of partnership with a wide range of stakeholders, the City’s Housing Element was approved by a unanimous vote of the Board of Supervisors and signed by Mayor Breed in January 2023. Certified by California’s Department of Housing and Community Development, the Housing Element is San Francisco’s plan for meeting our housing needs for the next eight years (2023-2031). It is the City’s first housing plan centered on racial and social equity. Its policies and programs express San Francisco’s collective vision for the future of housing, guiding policymaking, housing programs, and the allocation of resources.

Through the Housing Element, San Francisco has committed itself to:

• housing as a right;
• repairing the harms of historic racial, ethnic, and social discrimination; and
• building enough housing for existing residents and future generations.

As an initial Housing For All measure, Mayor Breed launched Executive Directive 23-01 on February 7, 2023 as a critical first step forward, focusing on three specific areas critical to initial Housing Element implementation:

1. establishing a clear accountability and oversight structure,
2. holding departments responsible for specific actions in alignment with Housing Element goals and actions, and
3. setting accelerated timelines for the proposal of high-impact legislation.

By focusing on a specific set of near-term actions, this Executive Directive laid the groundwork for the City to unlock our housing pipeline, accelerate the approval of new housing projects, and create additional capacity for all types of housing across San Francisco.

As prices skyrocket, teachers, first responders, service workers, and those who keep the City running have been forced to leave their neighborhoods. The population of San Francisco's diverse communities, particularly American Indian and Black communities, continue to decline, while the number of unhoused residents remains alarmingly high. San Francisco is for everyone, and now is the time to implement our vision to provide housing for all people during all phases of their life - including providing starter homes for young professionals, affordable housing for working families, and units and services that support our seniors.

In February 2023, Mayor Breed released the Roadmap to Downtown San Francisco’s Future, outlining nine strategies for Downtown. Building on the Mayor’s Roadmap, the Planning Department and the Office of Economic and Workforce Development (OEWD) are working together, along with community organizations, to address downtown recovery in both the near- and long-term.

The effort is focused on four themes to support the revitalization of Downtown: “Economic Diversification and The Future of Office,” “Expanding Downtown Housing,” “Public Life and Retail, and Union Square.”

While far reaching, two highlights from this broader effort include:

1. In May 2023, the City partnered with the Urban Land Institute on an Advisory Services Panel to bring local and national experts together and explore ways to create a more resilient, economically vibrant, and equitable Downtown neighborhood.

2. The City issued a Request for Interest (RFI) for the adaptive reuse of Downtown commercial buildings on June 22, 2023. The RFI invites potential project sponsors to partner with the City and identify types of support needed to convert underutilized commercial space into housing and other new uses. The City received ten applications - all for adaptive reuse to housing - including housing for artists and transitional housing.

On January 1, 2023, The Planning Department significantly adjusted the intake process to improve our customers’ experience and to enhance compliance with the Permit Streamlining Act. Key developments include:

• Project Application checklists, listing all required materials for submittal, are now available.

• Applicants now consistently receive feedback from the Planning Department within 30 days of filing a new Project Application.

• A planner is assigned to a project immediately upon that application being found complete. That planner will conduct a comprehensive review of the project, issuing a Plan Check Letter within 30 days for projects with less than 150 units and within 60 days for projects with 150 units or more.

To facilitate this faster and more predictable review timeline, the Department deployed the first of a package of significant back-of-house technological improvements that enable our Development Review Team managers and planners to better track and report on workloads through dynamic dashboards identifying deadlines and providing alerts for critical work-product.

This suite of improvements has already:

• Increased transparency of the intake process and compliance with applicable requirements;
• streamlined assignment timelines and reduced administrative tasks;
• assisted planners with managing their workload; and
• ensured consistent compliance with the Permit Streamlining Act.