We need more housing in San Francisco, but the vast majority of residential land in the Bay Area is covered by single family zoning, where it’s illegal to build small multifamily housing-- including most of the SF Westside.* Even many neighborhoods that used to allow new apartments, such as the Richmond District, were downzoned in the '60s through '80s, blocking new homes when the local economy soared.

A growing body of research shows the inequitable impacts of single family zoning. The Color of Law, Generation Priced Out, Segregation by Design, and Homes for All describe how exclusionary single family zoning had discriminatory effect and intent. This September, the UC Berkeley Terner Center released a working paper demonstrating that single family zoning caused higher housing costs and less racial integration across California jurisdictions. These policies harm the economy and the environment by pushing people far away from jobs and opportunity. This is especially detrimental here given the severity of the California housing crisis.

Cities and states around the country are recognizing these facts and starting to redress historical mistakes. Minneapolis and Oregon recently allowed duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes to be built where single family homes are currently only allowed. Berkeley decided this spring to investigate restoring "missing middle housing."

Why is it legal to build a mansion but not a fourplex? How does banning apartments serve the goals of equity and affordability? Though fourplexes and other types of small multifamily housing will not solve all our affordability challenges, the high price of valuable land drives high housing costs in SF, and sharing that land among multiple units is inherently more affordable. Current limits on the number of units per house ("density control") have nothing to do with health and safety (covered by other laws), nor with building scale. Many small older homes are already being legally converted to very large single family houses, when they could instead be converted into fourplexes.

It is time for San Francisco to follow Berkeley, Oregon, and Minneapolis. Much of the debate about housing construction has focused on the narrow corridors where new apartments and condos are currently allowed, which heavily overlap with historically lower income communities populated disproportionately by people of color. It is time for every neighborhood to share the challenges and the opportunities of providing new housing.

We the undersigned believe we should change San Francisco zoning such that everywhere a single family home is legal in SF, new fourplexes should be allowed, without long delays and discretionary approvals (i.e. “by right”). Furthermore, for this to have sufficient impact in SF, conversion or demolition of existing owner-occupied homes should be allowed, provided that implementation prioritizes avoiding displacement of any existing tenants: no buildings should be modified without the full consent of their residents.

*Recent legislation has legalized accessory dwelling units in many single family homes. Not counting these, approximately 72% of California's residential land is zoned for detached single family homes only (Rothwell 2019).
[Image c/o AARP, Opticos Design]