Housing for Every San Franciscan

Housing Policy Platform

Rent and housing prices in San Francisco continue to reach astronomical levels and show no sign of slowing down. People looking for housing line up around the block at open houses and are forced to bid on rental units, driving out working and middle-class families. This is unacceptable, and it is why San Francisco must say yes to housing for everyone, at all income levels, for those who need a stable home, affordable rent, or family housing.

We can and we must build a city that's affordable for everyone. For the service workers who are the backbone of this town, for young families, seniors, long-term survivors of HIV/AIDS, people with disabilities, and kids who grew up here and want to stay.

My own experience taught me the importance of the full ladder out of homelessness. I had opportunities to go from the streets to shelters, to single room occupancy hotels (SROs). And I went from treatment to transitional housing, to permanent supportive housing and subsidized rent, to a market-rate two bedroom apartment. That ladder simply doesn't exist today. My husband and I wouldn't be able to afford our rental apartment were it to go back on the market today.

We also must ensure that tenants can stay in their homes, free from the threat of unlawful evictions, massive rent increases, and other predatory behavior from landlords. That's why I unequivocally support fully funding legal aid for tenants, and other protections. And as a lifelong renter, I will always stand up for renters.

My plan details how we can get more homes built quickly while protecting tenants and ensuring good union jobs and prevailing wages, so people can afford both to work and live in San Francisco. And, I will do this by supporting our registered apprenticeship programs to train the next generation of young people to quickly build the housing pipeline we need, while paying them enough to live in our incredible city.

Here's my plan:

Thinking Bigger in District 8

Our neighborhoods are some of the most beautiful and connected neighborhoods in the city. But for decades, District 8 has not seen adequate new housing development and rents have climbed. There are great opportunities throughout the district to build in small infill lots, but there are also the larger underused sites hiding in plain sight: strip mall parking lots, single-story stores on major corridors, land around our train stations. Here's where we should start:

• Redeveloping the Castro Safeway and Pottery Barn sites. The Safeway at 2020 Market Street sits on one of the largest and best-located development opportunities in San Francisco: a single-story store surrounded by a sea of surface parking, directly on a major transit corridor in the heart of our district. City leaders have been trying to negotiate housing on this site since 2011. Meanwhile, as Safeway and its development partner move forward with plans for new housing units on their other San Francisco sites, the Castro location hasn't yet been discussed as a potential site. As Supervisor, I will work with the Mayor, the Planning Department, Safeway and the site's owners to reach a binding redevelopment agreement within 18 months for a mixed-income project with two thousand new homes, including affordable and family-sized units, above a full-service grocery store, with guaranteed grocery access for the neighborhood throughout construction and protections for the store's union workers. I'll work to make the site easy for the developers to partner with the city and nonprofit developers on. This could look like: pre-approved zoning and objective design standards so a compliant project is entitled over the counter, no discretionary review, fees deferred to certificate of occupancy, and a standing offer from the city to partner on the affordable share through the Mayor's Office of Housing and Community Development (MOHCD). This will ensure that if an owner wants to build, the city becomes their fastest path. If the site remains without housing, I will introduce a Resolution of Necessity to acquire it for a public purpose: mixed-income housing above a neighborhood-serving grocery, built with union labor in partnership with the Mayor's Office of Housing and Community Development (MOHCD) and nonprofit developers. The Balboa Reservoir project is an example of the kind of partnership that could work very well for this site – with developers partnering with MOHCD to produce thousands of affordable units. I will also use these tools so the City can finally acquire the old Pottery Barn site at the corner of Castro and Market Streets. This site should host smaller ground-floor retail opportunities, and mixed-use affordable and market rate apartments above. It would also be the perfect site for an underground parking garage the City can manage, paid for by a bond.
• Glen Park: one of SF's most transit-accessible neighborhoods, with room to build. Glen Park has something almost no neighborhood in America has: a BART station surrounded by vacant and underused land. Under the city's new zoning, the lots across from the station could hold apartments, and state law now gives transit agencies new authority to build housing on their own property near stations. As Supervisor, I will pursue a formal joint development partnership with BART for the Glen Park station area, with a goal of hundreds of new homes, including affordable homes, above ground-floor shops and services that make the village stronger, alongside safer walking and biking connections to the station. This could also be a good candidate for a 100% affordable site, given BART's interest in developing fully affordable apartments on their land.
• A lot more housing in Diamond Heights. Diamond Heights was master-planned in the 1960s around the automobile, and its aging shopping center sits behind acres of surface parking on some of the best-situated land in the district. I will work with the property owners and the neighborhood to plan a phased redevelopment that keeps a full grocery store and neighborhood-serving retail while adding mixed-income housing above and around it, with a focus on senior homes.
• Retiring the gas stations. Upper Market still hosts gas stations and auto-era parcels on land that could hold hundreds of homes steps from the Castro Muni station. Several are already eyed for redevelopment. I will make it district policy to help every one of these sites convert to housing, will fast-track the approvals, and will direct the city to inventory its own surface parking lots in District 8 as sites for affordable housing. In the middle of a housing shortage and a climate crisis, a gas station on Market Street is a monument to the past, especially as we see more and more electric vehicles on the roads. Protecting gas stations is simply not a good use of the limited land we have here in San Francisco.

Getting the Funding Flowing

None of this gets built without real money behind it. This November, I'm supporting ballot measures that would fund it.

• Passing the Affordable Housing Guarantee Act. This measure locks in Prop I's transfer tax on ultra-luxury real estate sales over $10 million, roughly $350 million more over the next three years, for affordable housing, social housing, and tenant stability programs like eviction defense and rental assistance, and exempts new multi-family housing from the tax.
• State and regional funding. I'll continue to advocate for more state and regional funding for affordable housing opportunities, and advocate for a regional affordable housing bond.

Adding New Rungs to the Housing Ladder

• Bringing back the modern SRO and legalizing co-living and group housing opportunities. Single room occupancy hotels helped me out of homelessness, and now that opportunity no longer exists in San Francisco. I will work to fully create new single-room and co-living homes with shared kitchens and common space, the most affordable housing the private market can build without a subsidy, and a crucial option for young people, service workers, people in recovery, and people leaving homelessness.
• Make Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) affordable-by-design apartments or ownership opportunities. San Francisco now allows certain ADUs to be sold separately as condominiums for the first time, unlocking homeownership for more San Franciscans. I will work to expand eligibility, create a clean amnesty path for unpermitted units so they can be made safe and legal, and eliminate the petty code interpretations that block good projects. I will also work to make construction of ADUs more affordable by providing pre-approved plans, and eliminating costly curb-cut requirements by the Department of Public Works. By adding ADUs in existing rent-controlled housing, we're also able to expand rent-controlled housing stock.
• Piloting social housing in San Francisco. I will champion a San Francisco social housing pilot on public land, and I will strengthen our Community Opportunity to Purchase Act and small sites acquisition programs so rent-controlled buildings can be preserved as permanently affordable homes. Most importantly, we need to prioritize and put funding behind this pilot so these homes actually get built. Social housing is a great idea that helps no one unless there is funding attached.

Permanent Supportive Housing and Homelessness

District 8 currently has just one permanent supportive housing site in the entire district. That is not fair to our unhoused neighbors, and it is not fair to the rest of the city. As Supervisor, I will actively recruit and champion new supportive and interim housing in our district, including LGBTQ-affirming sites like housing for trans youth in the Castro and deeply affordable senior housing in Noe Valley.

• New permanent supportive housing in District 8. I will fight to get the 1939 Market Street project built, which would bring 15 stories of affordable senior housing developed by Mercy Housing and Openhouse to serve our LGBTQ+ community, with construction slated to begin as soon as late 2026. Projects like this one are exactly what the bottom rungs of the housing ladder look like, and we need them now more than ever.
• Block by block support. I will bring the model pioneered by Los Angeles Councilmember Nithya Raman to District 8. A community-based, block-by-block approach that pairs sustained outreach with actual offers of shelter and housing when beds become available was able to cut tents and encampments by more than half in three years in her district. As Supervisor, I will build a dedicated homelessness team inside the District 8 office and publish a public District 8 dashboard tracking placements and long-term housing retention, so residents can hold me accountable.
• Housing First works. I was appointed by Governor Jerry Brown to the state's Homeless Coordinating and Financing Council to remove barriers like bad credit and old criminal records from keeping people out of housing, and I will bring that same approach to City Hall. I support sober living options and recovery housing, but I will always insist that no one's housing be made contingent on continuous sobriety. We can improve on Housing First in San Francisco by reforming the way our Coordinated Entry system works by better assessing the needs of people as they are placed in housing to ensure where they are going has resources on-site for their level of care, be it mental health, addiction, or other services. We can and should say yes to housing everywhere in District 8.

Finishing the Work on Zoning Reform

Several state bills have passed to rezone San Francisco for more dense housing, and the Family Zoning Plan is the city's first major citywide rezoning in decades. New state laws like SB 79 have opened the blocks around our transit stations to new homes too. That's real progress, and I have fought for it. But there's more work to do to actually get the units built. Zoning reforms like these continue to face the same old obstructionist tactics and bureaucratic challenges, from carve-outs to lawsuits to ballot measures. We have to both defend what we've won, and push it further.

• Supporting true implementation of state-led zoning reforms. San Francisco should work in conjunction with the state to fully implement zoning reforms and housing programs in good faith. I will defend the full housing capacity of statewide zoning reforms before state regulators and oppose exclusion ordinances, downzoning amendments, and attempts to comply with the letter of state law while violating its spirit at the Board of Supervisors.
• The Family Zoning Plan is an important start. I supported Mayor Daniel Lurie's Family Zoning plan because it moves us forward and will make it easier to build housing in areas that have underbuilt for decades. But new zoning capacity only matters if homes actually get built, so as Supervisor I will focus on implementation. We still need faster permitting, a functional plan check process, binding approval deadlines, and full use of the new Housing Choice SF bonus program, including its incentives for projects that add new rent-controlled homes.

Making the Building Code Work for Us, Not Against Us

New laws from pro-housing state legislators like Senator Scott Wiener have changed the game when it comes to zoning. Thanks to these efforts, it's finally legal to build in more places, especially near transit and on commercial corridors in San Francisco. The Family Zoning Plan was also a step in the right direction when it comes to making it easier to build housing. While these zoning changes have made some key new housing projects possible, we need to see more in the pipeline. Making a dent in our affordability crisis will require implementing common-sense building code reforms that bring our laws up to 21st century standards and needs.

Legalizing an apartment building on paper is only half the job. The building code decides what those homes cost and who they can actually fit – and this is where a Supervisor can make the biggest difference in making a project a reality. For example, our code still requires every apartment building over three stories to have two stairwells connected by a long hallway on every floor. This outdated rule forces builders to assemble large lots, drives up land costs, and fills new buildings with studios and one bedrooms instead of the two, three and four bedroom homes that families need. These rules encourage bigger, wider buildings rather than the narrower and more fine-grained infill that is less disruptive to the feel of neighborhoods. Single-stair and small elevators can and will result in better-looking buildings, not just cheaper construction costs. Fixing rules like this one is some of the least glamorous and most important housing work a Supervisor can do.

Due to AB 130, the state building code is frozen on a couple of these points until 2031. I will both work with the state delegation to get some of these fixes carved out and I will work at the local level so that the city is ready to implement these changes in 2031 when they become legal.

How we can fix our building code:

• Legalize single-stair apartment buildings. Allow single-stairway buildings up to six stories to build more family-sized apartments. As Supervisor, I will sponsor a local building code amendment to legalize single-stair buildings, working with the San Francisco Fire Department to pair it with the safeguards (things like automatic sprinklers, pressurized or open-air stairwells, limits on units per floor, and noncombustible construction) to make these buildings work. I will also back state legislation to make this reform permanent across California. Single-stair reform is one way we can unlock the thousands of smaller and uniquely shaped lots across District 8 that are home to small buildings and single family homes, or are sitting vacant.
• Right-size our elevator rules. Elevator requirements make installing an elevator in small apartments several times more costly than what it is in other places. This quietly kills small apartment buildings and leaves seniors and people with disabilities in walk-ups with no elevators at all. I will support state and local reform to align our elevator standards to ensure San Francisco stops adding local requirements on top of them.
• Publish pre-approved plans. The city should offer a library of permit-ready designs for ADUs and small apartment buildings on standard San Francisco lots, so a homeowner or small builder can pull a permit in weeks instead of years. I will also champion factory-built and mass timber construction that uses union labor, which can cut costs and timelines while creating good manufacturing jobs. These reforms build on Mayor Lurie's PermitSF effort, which I support. My job as Supervisor will be to push it further and make it permanent in law, not just in executive directives.

Protecting Tenants

Building more housing and protecting tenants do not have to be in conflict. They're the same fight, because they're both essential to keeping people housed and in this city. That's why the Family Zoning Plan exempted rent-controlled buildings with more than two units from height increases, an exemption I agreed with. I also unequivocally support rent control, and have supported efforts to repeal Costa-Hawkins at the state level.

We also need to shore up our defense and aid programs for tenants:

• Expanding vouchers and family-sized affordable housing. I'll push to increase the availability of housing vouchers and subsidies, and expand affordable housing built for families, with two- and three-bedroom units, not just studios and one-bedrooms. That also means strengthening the SF Housing Authority to support these residents. SFHA is currently woefully understaffed and struggles to service existing subsidies.
• Legal aid for tenants. Eviction filings in San Francisco are surging, with roughly 3,700 filings projected in 2025, up from about 2,900 the year before, and still the city eliminated millions in civil legal aid funding. San Francisco voters made this the first city in America to guarantee every tenant a lawyer when facing eviction, and full representation keeps roughly two out of three tenants in their homes. As Supervisor, I will protect legal aid funding for tenants, fully fund the Tenant Right to Counsel program so every tenant gets full-scope representation rather than triage, and fight to fully restore civil legal aid funding.
• Strengthening tenant protections. I support efforts to strengthen tenant protections, including a strengthened anti-harassment ordinance. I'll work to create an early-warning system requiring landlords to notify the city before filing an eviction, so rental assistance and legal help can reach tenants in time to keep them housed. I'll pass protections against eviction over small amounts of overdue rent, and require meaningful relocation payments when tenants are displaced. Additionally, rent buyouts are climbing again, reaching levels not seen since before the pandemic. As Supervisor, I will work to ensure every tenant has access to independent legal advice before signing a buyout agreement.
• Ending Ellis Act abuse. The Ellis Act was sold as a way for small landlords to exit the rental business, but it's become a tool used to clear out rent-controlled tenants, hitting our seniors and long-term District 8 residents the hardest. I'll be a vocal advocate for state reform that closes this loophole, lengthens notice and relocation assistance, and penalizes fraudulent Ellis and owner move-in evictions. I'll strengthen the City's right of first refusal to purchase Ellis Act properties before they leave the rental market for good, and make sure every tenant facing an Ellis eviction has immediate access to legal aid.

Housing and Historic Preservation

District 8's rich history leans more cultural than architectural. Some of our historic spaces include Harvey Milk's camera shop, the Castro Theatro, the bars and bookstores where the LGBTQ community gathered (and continues to). I will always fight to protect what is genuinely historic about this district. What I will not do is let historic preservation be twisted and used against building the homes we need to house the next generation of San Franciscans. Too often in SF, "historic" gets invoked not to honor our history and culture, but to stop apartments and affordable homes from getting built. We've seen a parking lot nominated for landmarking the moment housing is proposed, or a gas station discovered to have architectural significance only when someone tries to build homes on it.

My plans include:

• Permanently protecting actual landmarks. The Family Zoning Plan already prohibits demolition of state and federal landmarks and exempts local landmarks from upzoning, and it also rewards projects that preserve and reuse historic buildings with additional square footage. I'll also push for a completed citywide historic survey, so we can identify what is truly significant up front and on its merits before any project is on the table.
• Ending ambush landmarking. Thanks to new state laws, a building must already be on a historic register before a housing application is filed for its demolition to block streamlined review. San Francisco can and should adopt the same principle across the board so that no eleventh-hour landmark nominations are filed to stall pipeline housing.
• Review landmarked sites. As a result of decades of historic preservation abuse, often political in nature, I will work on legislation requiring the Historic Preservation Commission to review all previously landmarked sites every 10 years.
• Preserving culture by making D8 affordable. The most historic thing about the Castro is its history as a safe haven for the queer community. Preservation that prices our community out threatens our culture and history. Instead, I will focus on efforts that protect our cultural landmarks while making SF more affordable and meeting the needs of the people who actually live here today, as well as the people who have been pushed farther and farther out over the years by rising costs. This looks like: strengthening the legacy business program, supporting the LGBTQ Cultural District, ensuring displaced small businesses have a right to return in new mixed-use buildings, and championing the adaptive reuse program that keeps landmark buildings alive as gathering places.

Making State Laws Work in SF

• Bringing lot splits to SF. State laws allowing lot splits, small subdivisions and ministerial townhomes have produced almost nothing in San Francisco, because local fees and processes quietly kill them. I will audit every local barrier standing between these laws and the creation of actual homes so that we can make them a reality – and make it possible for multiple generations to live together in different properties on a single lot, or help longtime residents stay in their homes while making income from a lot split.
• Affordable housing on faith land. State law now allows faith institutions and nonprofit colleges to build 100% affordable housing on their land with ministerial approval. District 8 is full of congregations with aging buildings and empty lots. I will map every eligible parcel in our district and create a program that connects congregations with affordable housing builders, alongside city predevelopment support and nonprofit partners.
• Finish the job on discretionary review. New apartment projects now qualify for ministerial approval, with no discretionary review and no endless appeals. But discretionary review still lives in our local code, tangling up ADUs, remodels, etc. I will work with Planning to standardize design questions into objective standards that builders can follow, and remove discretionary review for code-compliant housing from the Planning Code itself, so that following the rules guarantees approval.