San Francisco Mayor London Breed and Supervisor Joel Engardio have proposed a new housing bill that would effectively give the city the ability to open a shelter just about anywhere, including residential areas.
The proposed legislation comes two months after Mayor Breed announced her Housing For All Plan, an effort to meet the state-mandated goal of creating 82,000 units of housing during the next eight years.
One portion of the bill would expand the residential zones in which emergency shelters are allowed.
Currently, shelters can only be authorized as “conditional use” in multifamily residential zones. However, if the legislation is adopted, shelters would be allowed in all residential zones without a hearing before the Planning Commission and zero say from taxpaying homeowners.
The zoning changes proposed by Breed and Engardio’s bill would effectively end the need to declare a crisis to ensure quick approval of a shelter.
San Francisco is already looking at a budget deficit estimated to exceed $700 million over the next two years and spent $1.1 Billion in the fiscal year 2021–22 on the homelessness epidemic.