Mayor Lurie’s "Family Plan"
Is It Really For Families? Is It Even A Plan?
by Romalyn Schmaltz
Supervisor Danny Sauter Representing Real Estate Developers and The YIMBY Lobby on the Steps of City Hall
The 75% to 25% Ratio between Protesters and the YIMBY lobby
Dispatches from the "Abundance" Rally and Planning Commission Hearing
District 3 residents and small business owners helped lead a massive and mischievous-serious counterrally disrupting Mayor Daniel Lurie’s City Hall press conference on the morning of September 11, where self-described YIMBYs (“Yes in My Back Yard,” a real-estate marketing movement) posed and pontificated with the Board of Supervisors’ conservative cohort to celebrate the promise of “Abundance” they believe Lurie’s deceptively branded “Family Zoning Plan” will bring to them and future San Franciscans more or less like them.
This was to be a kind of proclamation of a new era of prosperity dawning for The City, a “boom loop” of building replacing the “doom loop” predicated by the pandemic. (It’s worth noting that both these phrases were born in YIMBY marketing incubators, as were the false dichotomies of “YIMBY” and “NIMBY”—“Not in My Back Yard.”) But with 75% of the throng raising signs, fists, and voices in protest, the most abundant element of the gathering was not the speakers huddled and centered for the cameras, but the collective and thunderous resistance to their hubris.
Originally intended to be a “silent protest” by a citywide network of activists, neighborhood associations, legacy policymakers, and artists, as Mayor Lurie took the mic, shouts of “Liar!” became a deluge from all sides, drowning out his amplified speech and the cries of SF YIMBY’s organized supporters.
“You’re a stooge—a shill for [State Senator] Scott Wiener!” and other accusations flew at the new Mayor who looked visibly distraught and even confused at being opposed so overwhelmingly. It was as if his months of marketing extreme upzoning weren’t convincing his underestimated constituents, and he was left to twist in the winds of blowback, a tiny Narcissus trapped in his handlers’ echo chamber.
At one point the Mayor tried to pacify the crowd with a promise: “If I can speak now, then I’ll come down there and listen to you.” He continued to speak, but he never “came down” or listened to anyone. Safely centered within his supporters, he seemed not to realize that the folks he promised to meet later “down there” had already risen to flank his ranks and raise anti-upzoning signs alongside, behind, and in front of him and all the speakers.
“This is not a family plan” was a common slogan and chant, with many protest posters emblazoned with statistics that reveal Lurie’s branding isn’t persuading San Francisco’s savviest voters. “Mayor Lurie’s ‘Family Zoning’ is actually 75% Studios & 1-Bedrooms” read many signs. And so it is: Inclusion in the zoning is a feeble requirement that 25% of units—condos or rentals—offer two or more bedrooms.
“Another way of putting that is that 75% of the units are for single occupancy,” laughed a protester holding a large white sign with red and blue lettering. “Calling that ‘family housing’ is like calling this white poster blue.”
YIMBY Lobbyist Jane Natoli Speaks at The Crowd For Tech and Real Estate Deregulation
One North Beach protester arrived dressed as a high-rise structure comprising Mission muralist Michale Rios’ paintings of high-rises and festooned with banners hawking $10M condos (which some proposed new units will probably cost) and the slogan, “THE RENT IS TOO DAMN LOW”—the latter sentiment having actually been uttered by Housing Action Coalition Executive Director and YIMBY avatar Corey Smith at a January 2024 Planning Commission hearing in which he pleaded, “We need the rents to go back up” for housing to be profitable enough to attract luxury and market-rate developers.
The welcome didn’t warm with the day as four District Supervisors—Danny Sauter, Bilal Mahmood, Matt Dorsey, and now-recalled Joel Engardio—aligned with the Mayor’s myopic vision took their turns at the mic. Seen frequently with the Mayor in photo-ops and Instagram reels celebrating curb paintings, our District 3 Supervisor Sauter took to the podium only to gaze out on a sea of his own angry constituents, some of whom lampooned him in masks of his likeness.
Despite fierce opposition from his home base, Supervisor Sauter has doubled down on his decision to volunteer precious parcels of our district for doubled height limits, even though prior to his taking office, our current zoning in North Beach, Fisherman’s Wharf, and Telegraph Hill was not on any map drawn to comply with state mandates. Now—as a direct result of his secretive giveaway of our local controls—Fisherman’s Wharf has at least 11 blocks upzoned to 65 feet, and about another 17 blocks on the waterfront allow for condos up to 85 feet tall, or 8-9 stories, more than twice its current limits. Add to that over a dozen upzoned blocks along Columbus Avenue (but not Sauter’s block where he lives). Staff defending his decision at a recent town hall assured fuming attendees that “You can’t notice that elevation from Coit Tower.”
So Team Sauter’s conclusion for our concerns about free and fair access to the Bay seems to be if that you don’t want to see a wall on the waterfront (and voters keep demonstrating they don’t throughout the decades), just move to the top of a 210-foot tower atop a 284-foot hill.
“He volunteered for [State Senator] Wiener’s campaigns, he’s a techie marketer, and he has no policy experience. What could possibly go wrong for our henhouse with a fox like that for supervisor?” hollered one protester in a Scott Wiener mask. “He’s giving North Beach Mar-a-Lago Face,” referring to the telltale plastic surgery currently favored by MAGA elites.
Protester With a Mask of YIMBY Lobbyist Scott Wiener and High-Rise of the Future
Things only got worse for The YIMBY show as Sauter passed the microphone to his colleagues on the Board of Supervisors, particularly for Supervisors Dorsey and Engardio, both of whom deciding that going full-Elvis on the tone-deaf bluster was surely the best way to foster communication and consensus between hungry constituents and corporate appetites.
Pantomiming a bulldozer experiencing a heart attack in progress, D6 Supervisor Dorsey briefly turned the wayward presser into comic-book pandemonium as he leaned red-faced into the crowd, ordering hundreds of San Franciscans, terrified for their futures and exercising their First-Amendment rights, to just shut up already.
“No one needs your nonsense!” he scolded protesters, adding that they weren’t the “grown-ups in the room” as he rounded out his very adult tantrum with, “Sit down!”
And sit down they did not.
Protesters Not Interested in the YIMBY Propaganda
Then came the Supervisor everybody and nobody was waiting for. The one who 2024 supervisorial candidate Sauter cited as the elected official he admired most, and the one who would be recalled just five days after the rally: D4 Supervisor Engardio.
One had to strain to hear much of what Engardio had to say as a chorus of “Recall! Recall!” was chanted loudly against YIMBYs’ counter-shouting “Joel! Joel!” At length, he was able to regain some vocal traction with the crowd, only to lie reductively to them that the only thing they had to fear about D4’s upzoning amounted to a “five-story building for teachers.” His district’s most recent map, however, features dozens of blocks now freshly zoned for 85 feet, or eight to nine stories.
(District 4 responded five days later with an “Outside Landslide”—63% of voters ousted him for putting campaign donors before constituents and ignoring their strong intent to keep the Great Highway open. Engardio put the issue on the 2024 ballot where it was likely to be approved instead of working with the people affected most by his whims, closed the Great Highway to car traffic, created a park his residents didn’t want, and now he’s out of a job for doing exactly these things.)
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“The unemployment line is that way!” pointed one protester to a faraway building.
Following the Supervisor slide deck, the “Abundance” press conference steamrolled along with various YIMBY enthusiasts. Architect Serina Calhoun lamented, “I recently lost an employee because even though I was paying him over $100,000 a year, he still couldn’t afford to live in The City” and insisted that market-rate and luxury housing was a boon to low-income communities because wealthier residents would allow poorer families access to better schools. The audience didn’t much mourn the loss of her six-figure employee, and they didn’t seem to believe her that rich school kids raise all boats in the public education waters.
Then came Charles Whitfield, chair of the SF Sierra Club that was famously ambushed by ambitious YIMBY astroturfers (activists using environmentalism as a beard for environmental deregulation) several years ago. Whitfield compared his experience in San Francisco to his Texas upbringing, concluding that Lurie’s upzoning plan was good for the environment. He argued that bringing tens of thousands of new residents to San Francisco—however lacking in infrastructure—from places like Texas would simply be a matter of “more people enjoying our beautiful weather instead of sitting inside blasting the AC in a 100-degree heat wave” in cities like Houston.
As the press conference fizzled, folks filed into City Hall for what became almost a record marathon. The subsequent 10-hour Planning Commission hearing resulted in hundreds of public speakers, and at the end of the night, around 75% of that public comment was counted as being against Mayor Lurie’s “Family Zoning” plan, and the seven Commissioners then took their turns weighing in.
“This is not a plan,” began Vice President Commissioner Kathrin Moore. “This is a document responding to a mandate primarily about numbers without a vision for what this upzoned city would look like. It’s difficult to say—it hurts, actually.” Moore seemed to be heartbroken as she spoke, and if Lurie’s upzoning folks were already thin-skinned, she then excoriated them.
“The plan doesn’t claim to be an urban design plan. We’re going way beyond two or three generations of people who will live with the consequences of this and will not have a say. There is no phasing plan needed to incrementally evaluate this, and there is no construction sequencing plan […] Regarding construction, there is nothing forward-looking or innovative […] There is no physical plan, no three-dimensional visualization. There is no infrastructure plan. There is no transportation plan. There is no open space plan.”
“To me it sometimes feels like quicksand. Like when we did the Housing Element, we felt like we had gained solid ground and had the support—as much as you can ever have full support—from the public. It’s hard for me […] to justify this massive redistricting and destruction of a functioning city.”
Commissioner Gilbert Williams had his own questions, namely who put District 3 on the map. When staff refused to admit it was the District 3 Supervisor himself, Williams continued his questions. “Where’s the affordable housing? Where’s our senior housing? Tenant protections aren’t there. There’s too much at stake and we’re not ready to roll this out. As someone who was born and raised here, I want to go on the record that this plan is not equitable.”
Williams concluded by observing an existential threat to the very Commission hearing the case and pleaded with his colleagues. “In addition to not being in compliance with priority planning policies, this plan will essentially render this Planning Commission powerless. I don’t know if you guys really understand that. It’s taking a lot of our jurisdiction away from us. The public will no longer have the opportunity to voice any concerns over residential development in our city, stripping us of a public right we now have.”
Two of his colleagues, Theresa Imperial and Moore agreed and voted against the plan. But despite 75% of the speakers who took the day off and camped out at City Hall being against Lurie’s upzoning, the Mayor’s four recent appointees carried the plan to a yes vote around 10 p.m. Democracy, it seemed, was not thriving that day.
“In successful, livable cities throughout the world, they change and reinvent themselves around the principle of keeping history alive and using the old as a nucleus for the development of new neighborhoods.” Vice President Moore lamented. “San Francisco used to be one of those cities.”Do not despair—declare yourself engaged! The struggle to protect the character, culture, and residents of North Beach, Telegraph Hill, and Fisherman’s Wharf continues, and you can meet us in whatever moment we are when you read this and join the community in meaningful resistance. Unfortunate examples like Engardio verify that people power is still where it’s at, and that truth is proving quite uncomfortable for many of San Francisco’s elected officials. In a time of radical erosion of democratic norms, insistence on true democracy at the local level is ever more paramount. When we fight, we win.
Standing Up For Tenants
Don’t Demolish San Francisco!
Photo credits to: Todd Darling
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