In an upending of The City’s decades-long housing policy, it should soon be legal to build four units of housing on any residential lot in San Francisco.
The fourplex measure was a compromise between the Board of Supervisors and Mayor London Breed, who had vetoed a previous version of the legislation adopted by the board this summer. As part of the compromise, the Board of Supervisors reduced the amount of time a property owner would need to control the lot, from five years to one, in order to create denser housing atop it. Supervisor Dean Preston had added the five-year ownership requirement to the vetoed bill, aiming to prevent speculation in the real estate market.
Mandelman stressed that it did not aim to address the city’s permitting process, but rather adjust the scope of what kind of housing is permitted in San Francisco.