Signed off by Mayor London Breed and the city's Board of Supervisors on last week, the plan calls for the construction of more 82,000 homes over the next eight years -- which is more than three times San Francisco's 10-year annual production average. Over half of those homes are planned to be affordable homes for low- and middle-income residents.
The ambitious strategy comes after the Newsom administration passed a law that requires cities to expand their housing goals beyond their initial targets. Newsom's office said the state has adopted an approach that emphasizes local government accountability, and it is already "yielding results" in places with long construction timelines and many bureaucratic hoops to jump through, like San Francisco.
Newsom said in a statement, "Through stringent state mandates with real consequences for failing to meet their obligation, San Francisco is showing what is possible when you stop kicking the can down the road and start to face the difficult decisions it takes to tackle the housing needs of Californians."
In its last housing plan, San Francisco only reached about 50 percent of its goal to build 16,000 affordable housing units from 2015 to 2022.
With the new state guidelines, San Francisco must permit 29,000 units within four years during its midterm assessment, otherwise they must rezone for more developments.
