S.F. Mayor Lurie’s ‘family zoning’ housing plan wins its first major approval
September 12, 2025
By J.K. Dineen, SF Chronicle
After an emotional 10-hour hearing exposing the deep divisions over how to address the city’s housing shortage, the San Francisco Planning Commission approved a plan Thursday night to allow for 36,000 new homes on the city’s west side and northern neighborhoods, despite opposition from groups who said the zoning changes would lead to rampant real estate speculation and displacement of small businesses and tenants.
Quintin Mecke, executive director of the Council of Community Housing Organizations, said: “The city has been having a bizarre conversation around housing where we keep focusing on zoning and we are losing absolute connection to production.”
“Who knows out of the 70,000 approved units in the pipeline — and the 17,000 approved affordable units — will ever be built for lack of financing, for lack of funding,” he said. “Yet we continue to imagine that zoning itself will solve all these problems.”
