Mayor Lurie’s ambitious upzoning proposal known as the ‘family zoning’ plan passed the Board of Supervisors in a 7-4 vote Tuesday, jacking up building heights in the Sunset, Marina, and elsewhere.

The last few months at SF City Hall have been a repeat of the wonky Housing Element debates of 2022 and 2023, where the state mandated that SF come up with a plan to build 82,000 new housing units by the year 2031. Now we’re facing the first deadline on that grand plan, as SF had to pass new zoning laws that would allow for this rush of new housing by January 31, or else lose tens of millions in state funding, and unleash a “builder’s remedy” free-for-all in which developers could just build any crazy thing they want.

So Mayor Daniel Lurie introduced his “family zoning” plan in hopes of meeting the state's requirement. That plan has been slogging its way through City Hall for the last three months. And many residents of the Richmond and Sunset neighborhoods, which would see significant height changes along some corridors under the plan, seem to absolutely hate the whole thing, so Lurie has been trying to sell it to them at a series of town hall meetings.

But on Tuesday, the votes of skeptical residents did not matter. The only votes that mattered Tuesday were the 11 members of the SF Board of Supervisors. And the Chronicle reports that the Supervisors passed Lurie’s family zoning plan in a 7-4 vote. (And I guess some of the supes went to a bar with Lurie afterwards to celebrate, as seen above? Maybe it’s an event space. But those are definitely the outfits that Supervisors Myrna Melgar and Bilal Mahmood were wearing during Tuesday’s vote.)

You can see the zoning changes that Lurie’s plan unleashes in the map above. The Sunset sees its height limits upzoned to 85 feet (from 65 feet) on Judah, Noriega and Taraval streets. Major streets in Fisherman’s Wharf can now get six-, eight- and ten-story buildings. And sections of the Marina’s Lombard Street could see towers as high as 16 stories.

Supervisor Melgar, who challenged Lurie’s plan with its first amendments and changes, somehow became the plan’s main cheerleader once her amendments were added to the proposal.

“Some colleagues have talked about this rezoning map pitting the west side against the east side of San Francisco. I would say we did that in 1978,” she said Tuesday, referring to the  Residential Rezoning of 1978 that seriously downzoned much of the city’s west side. “Rezoning itself will not solve our housing crisis or our affordability crisis. But it is an absolutely necessary step towards meeting our compliance with the state, and meeting our obligations for our economic development and our tomorrows.”

Critics have charged that the plan would lead to mass demolition of rent-controlled units in order to build taller housing. And there were amendments added so that buildings with three or more rent-controlled units were protected from demolition, saving an estimated 80,000 rent-controlled units from potential destruction. But that was not enough for the plan’s main opponent on the board, Supervisor Connie Chan.

“We’re still leaving approximately 20,000 rent-controlled units behind, putting 20,000 households at risk of displacement,” Chan said before voting no. “Most of them are located on the west side, especially the Richmond. 30% of those 20,000 rent-controlled units are located in the Richmond, the district that I represent.”

Chan tried to make another amendment at the eleventh hour to protect all rent-controlled units, but that amendment was quickly shot down. (And Chan said she wouldn’t vote for the plan anyway even if they added her amendment, which probably did not help persuade anyone on the fence about supporting her amendment.)

The Excelsior’s Supervisor Chyanne Chen was blunt about how much her district loathed Lurie’s proposed upzoning.

“In my very own district, I have received constituent emails with a ratio of two-to-one to oppose rezoning,” she said, before also voting no. “In District 11, we have larger households and many intergenerational families. We need development that ensures a good balance of family-sized units.”

But only Chan, Chen, and Supervisors Jackie Fielder and Shamann Walton voted no. Every other supervisor (including the Sunset’s newly appointed supervisor Alan Wong) voted yes on Lurie’s upzoning proposal.

“Is this the perfect plan? No,” Supervisor Mandelman said before voting yes. “Is it the plan that I would have written if I were the zoning czar for San Francisco? No. Is it good enough? Yes. And this is a case where I don’t think the perfect should be the enemy of the good enough."

This is being hailed as a big political win for Mayor Lurie, but it may be short-lived. Remember, the vote to ban cars from the Great Highway was initially considered a win for Supervisor Joel Engardio. And you know how that ended for him.

The city’s Chief Economist recently predicted that Lurie’s plan won’t result in anywhere near as much housing as Lurie is hyping. And the Chronicle reports the mega-YIMBY groups California Housing Defense Fund and Californians for Homeownership are planning to sue the city because they don't think Lurie’s plan goes far enough.

But the inconvenient truth that the YIMBY/NIMBY discourse ignores is that developers are just not building right now, because of construction costs, tariffs, and interest rates. Very significantly, the Chronicle noted that developers offered Lurie no support on this, saying they were “absent from the debate,” which is in “stark contrast” to their full-throated support for previous rezoning plans.

“Land prices are still expensive, the cost of construction is still expensive, interest rates are still relatively high, it still takes far too long to get a permit,” Residential Builders Association president Sean Keighran told the Chronicle. “Zoning is not the issue right now.”

Related: SF Elected Officials Get an Earful Over Lurie’s Rezoning Plans, Everyone Uses ‘Miami Beach’ as a Boogeyman [SFist]

Image: Joe Kukura, SFist