Mayor Lurie, Scott Wiener, and D2 Supervisor Stephen Sherrill all took some heat at SF town halls this week over Lurie’s proposed “family zoning” plan, with both critics and supporters saying the other side would turn SF into Miami Beach.

Above we see an image of Miami Beach, Florida, which famously has high-rise buildings right along the shoreline. And the term "Miami Beach” has now curiously entered the San Francisco political lexicon. During the Joel Engardio recall campaign, Engardio’s opponents popularized a sound bite claiming that Engardio's support for Mayor Daniel Lurie’s upzoning plan would turn “Ocean Bean into Miami Beach.” Though with Engardio now recalled, the Miami meme remains entrenched in the discourse.

So much so that both sides of the Lurie upzoning debate are now using the analogy. Lurie himself, District 2 Supervisor Stephen Sherrill, and state Senator Scott Wiener all faced voters at town hall meetings this week, in neighborhoods most affected by the upzoning. And all of them said that the Miami Beach-ification would happen if SF did not pass Lurie’s upzoning plan.

“I was born and raised in San Francisco. I think our neighborhoods are what make us so dynamic and unique,” Lurie told a testy and skeptical crowd at the Sunset Recreation Center Monday night, according to the Chronicle. “I also do not want Ocean Beach turned into Miami Beach.”

Supervisor Sherrill, a big supporter of Lurie’s plan, faced the music himself at Calvary Presbyterian Church in Pacific Heights the next night. “Nobody wants Miami Beach. That’s an interesting point of where we can all come together,” Sherrill told his constituents. “We don’t want Miami Beach. And this plan isn’t going to get Miami Beach, but the builder’s remedy could.”

This “builder’s remedy” Sherrill speaks of is the threat of San Francisco losing all local control of housing approval if we do not comply with a state-mandated requirement to build 82,000 new housing units by the year 2031. Lurie’s “family zoning” upzoning plan is his broad outline to try to meet that requirement.

But the plan comes with some sticker shock for certain neighborhoods that would see the height of buildings on some corridors drastically increased. A few cases in point: Per the Chronicle, parts of the Sunset and North Beach could see six- to eight-story buildings, Lombard Street could get 16-story buildings, part of Van Ness Avenue could get 24-story buildings.

That would be if Lurie’s plan passed. If it does not, and the city fails to meet its Housing Element mandates, SF could see the state take control of our housing-approval process with the so-called “builder’s remedy" — allowing developers nearly free-reign in getting permits approved. And the legislation allowing the state control was written by none other than SF’s own state Senator Scott Wiener.  

Wiener himself showed up at Monday night’s meeting in the Sunset to take questions. According to Mission Local’s on-the-ground reporting, it does not sound like Wiener’s sales pitch went over very well with voters.

“Why did you draft a state mandate to have every city upzone without any sensitivities to individual characters of each city, so that the state remedies would almost certainly destroy local uniqueness?” one questioner asked, reportedly getting some degree of anti-Wiener applause, and prompting an answer from Wiener that perhaps did him no favors.

“That’s like the ‘when did you start beating your spouse’ question,” Wiener responded. “I completely dispute the premise of that question.”

Mission Local says that “‘Oh wow…' people in the crowd scoffed.” The point of Wiener’s response may not have connected with a largely English-as-a-second-language audience who maybe wondered why he was bringing up beating spouses.

Regardless of that flub, Lurie’s “family zoning” plan has passed the SF Planning Commission (albeit narrowly), and will likely go before the SF Board of Supervisors next month. But in his nine short months in office, Lurie has not yet been forced to go to town halls and sell policies that are unpopular.

He has to do so now, against a backdrop of recall rabble-rousers in the Sunset suddenly feeling their oats. And if Lurie can’t sell the plan, some Miami Beach comparisons might make his “family zoning” proposal go south.

Related: Lurie’s ‘Family Zoning’ Proposal Starts Slogging Through City Hall, With Both NIMBY and YIMBY Opposition [SFist]

Image: High rises on Brickell Key, Miami Florida (Getty Images)